The philosophy of loyalty

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

BY
JOSIAH ROYCE

PROFESSOR OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Nefo gorfc
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1908

All rights reserved ^ **/ 1

COPYBIOHT, 1908,

BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1908. Reprinted
August, 1908.

NortoootJ

J. 8. Gushing Co. Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

PREFACE

IN 1906 and 1907 I gave, as a part of my
regular work at the Summer School of Har
vard University, an " Introduction to Ethics,
with Special Reference to the Interests of
Teachers." A few lectures, summing up the
main principles that lay at the basis of this
ethical course as it had been given in the
summer of 1906, were delivered in January
and February, 1907, before a general academic
audience, during a brief visit of mine at the
University of Illinois. In several other places,
both in the West and in the East, I have also
presented portions of my views upon ethics;
and in the summer of 1907 four general
lectures on the topic were repeated before
the Summer School of Theology at Harvard.
In November and December of 1907 the
lectures that constitute the present book were
delivered for the first time before the Lowell
Institute in Boston.

vi PREFACE

In preparing this new statement of my case
for the Lowell Institute course, I thus had
the opportunity to use the experience and
the criticisms that had resulted from several
previous efforts of mine to set forth my views
about the topics treated in this " Philosophy
of Loyalty." The Lowell Institute lectures
were, in fact, substantially a fresh presenta
tion of the material, only Lecture V, on
" American Problems," retaining any large
portion of the text of any of my former lec
tures. But, as the reader may see from the
foregoing statement, the general doctrine con
tained in " The Philosophy of Loyalty " here
worked out has been discussed, in various
forms, and with a good many friends, pupils,
and critics. I hope, therefore, that this book
bears marks of the aid that I have gained
from such contact with many sorts of minds,
in widely different places.

During the present academic year, 1907-
1908, the doctrine here presented has also
been put into the form of a regular college
course, which I have been permitted, as

PREFACE vii

visiting lecturer, to give to undergraduate
students at Yale University in weekly class-
meetings.

The present book, although in this way
related to present and past academic tasks,
is, nevertheless, not a text-book, and does not
mean to be an elaborately technical philo
sophical research. It is simply an appeal to
any reader who may be fond of ideals, and
who may also be willing to review his own
ideals in a somewhat new light and in a
philosophical spirit. Loyalty is indeed an
old word, and to my mind a precious one;
and the general idea of loyalty is still far
older than the word, and is immeasurably
more precious. But this idea has nearly
always been confused in men s minds by its
chance social and traditional associations.
Everybody has heard of loyalty; most prize
it; but few perceive it to be what, in its in
most spirit, it really is, the heart of all the
virtues, the central duty amongst all duties.
In order to be able to see that this is the true
meaning of the idea of loyalty, one has to free

viii PREFACE

this idea from its unessential if somewhat
settled associations with this or that special
social habit or circumstance. And in order
to accomplish this latter end, one has indeed
to give to the term a more exact meaning than
popular usage defines.

It is this freeing of the idea of loyalty from
its chance and misleading associations; it is
this vindication of the spirit of loyalty as the
central spirit of the moral and reasonable life
of man, it is this that I believe to be some
what new about my " Philosophy of Loyalty."
The conception of " Loyalty to Loyalty," as
set forth in my third lecture, constitutes the
most significant part of this ethical task. For
the rest, if my philosophy is, as a theory, more
or less new, I am still only trying to make
articulate what I believe to be the true spirit
and meaning of all the loyal, whoever they
may be, and however they define their fidelity.

The result of conceiving duty in terms of
the conception of loyalty which is here ex
pounded is, indeed, if I am right, somewhat
deep-going and transforming, not only for

PREFACE ix

ethics, but for most men s views of truth and
reality, and of religion. My own general
philosophical opinions have been set forth in
various works some time since (most elabo
rately in the volumes entitled " The World
and the Individual "). I have no change to
report in my fundamental metaphysical theses.
But I have not published any formulation of
my ethical opinions since the brief review
of ethical problems in the first part of my
" Religious Aspect of Philosophy " (published
in 1885). One learns a good deal about
ethics as one matures. And I believe that
this present statement of mine ought to help
at least some readers to see that such philo
sophical idealism as I have long maintained
is not a doctrine remote from life, but is in
close touch with the most practical issues ;
and that religion, as well as daily life, has
much to gain from the right union of ethics
with a philosophical theory of the real world.

At the moment there is much speech, in
current philosophical literature, regarding the
"nature of truth" and regarding " prag-

x PREFACE

matism." An ethical treatise very naturally
takes advantage of this situation to discuss
the relation between the " practical " and
the Eternal. I have done so in my closing
lectures. In order to do so, I have had to
engage in a certain polemic regarding the
problem of truth, a polemic directed against
certain opinions recently set forth by one of
the dearest of my friends, and by one of the
most loyal of men; my teacher for a while in
my youth; my honored colleague for many
years, Professor William James. Such a
polemic would be indeed much out of place
in a book upon Loyalty, were it not that my
friend and myself fully agree that, to both of
us, truth indeed " is the greater friend." Had
I not very early in my work as a student
known Professor James, I doubt whether any
poor book of mine w r ould ever have been
written, least of all the present one. What
I personally owe him, then, I most heartily
and affectionately acknowledge. But if he
and I do not see truth in the same light at
present, we still do well, I think, as friends,

PREFACE xi

each to speak his mind as we walk by the
way, and then to wait until some other light
shines for our eyes. I suppose that so to
do is loyalty.

Meanwhile, I am writing, in this book, not
merely and not mainly for philosophers, but
for all those who love, as I said, ideals, and
also for those who love, as I may now add,
their country, a country so ripe at present
for idealism, and so confused, nevertheless,
by the vastness and the complication of its
social and political problems. To simplify
men s moral issues, to clear their vision for
the sight of the eternal, to win hearts for
loyalty, this would be, in this land, a
peculiarly precious mission, if indeed I could
hope that this book could aid, however little,
towards such an end.

Amongst the numerous friends to whom
(whether or no they agree with all my views)
I am especially indebted for direct and in
direct aid in preparing this book, and for
criticisms and other suggestions, I must men
tion: first, my wife, who has constantly

xii PREFACE

helped me with her counsel, and in the
revision of my text ; then, my sister, Miss
Ruth Royce, of San Jose, California, with
whom I discussed the plan of the work in
the summer of 1907; then, Doctor and Mrs.
R. C. Cabot of Boston; Doctor J. J. Putnam
of Boston; and, finally, my honored col
league, Professor George H. Palmer.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY,

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS,
March 1, 1908.

CONTENTS

LKOTUKK PAOB

I. NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY . . 1

II. INDIVIDUALISM ...... 49

III. LOYALTY TO LOYALTY .... 99

IV. CONSCIENCE 147

V. SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS IN THEIR RELA
TION TO LOYALTY 197

VI. TRAINING FOR LOYALTY .... 249

VII. LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY . . . 299

VIII. LOYALTY AND RELIGION 349

xiii

I

NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY

LECTURE I

THE NATURE AND THE NEED OF LOYALTY

ONE of the most familiar traits of our time
is the tendency to revise tradition, to
reconsider the foundations of old beliefs, and
sometimes mercilessly to destroy what once
seemed indispensable. This disposition, as
we all know, is especially prominent in the
realms of social theory and of religious be
lief. But even the exact sciences do not
escape from the influence of those who are
fond of the reexamination of dogmas. And
the modern tendency in question has, of late
years, been very notable in the field of Ethics.
Conventional morality has been required,
in company with religion, and also in com
pany with exact science, to endure the fire
of criticism. And although, in all ages, the
moral law has indeed been exposed to the
assaults of the wayward, the peculiar moral
situation of our time is this, that it is no
longer either the flippant or the vicious who

3

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

are the most pronounced or the most dan
gerous opponents of our moral traditions.
Devoted reformers, earnest public servants,
ardent prophets of a coming spiritual order,
all these types of lovers of humanity are
represented amongst those who to-day de
mand great and deep changes in the moral
standards by which our lives are to be gov
erned. We have become accustomed, during
the past few generations, during the period
of Socialism and of Individualism, of Karl
Marx, of Henry George, of Ibsen, of Nietz
sche, of Tolstoi, --to hear unquestionably
sincere lovers of humanity sometimes declar
ing our traditions regarding the rights of
property to be immoral, and sometimes as
sailing, in the name of virtue, our present
family ties as essentially unworthy of the
highest ideals. Individualism itself, in many
rebellious forms, we often find asserting that
it speaks in the name of the true morality
of the future. And the movement begun
in Germany by Nietzsche the tendency
towards what that philosophical rhapsodist

NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY

called the "transmutation of all moral val
ues " - has in recent years made popular
the thesis that all the conventional morality
of the past, whatever may have been its in-
evitableness, or its temporary usefulness, was
in principle false, was a mere transition stage
of evolution, and must be altered to the core.
"Time makes ancient good uncouth": in this
well-known word one might sum up the spirit
of this modern revolt against moral traditions.
Now when we review the recent moral
controversies that express this sort of ques
tioning, some of us find ourselves especially
troubled and bewildered. We all feel that
if the foundations of the exact sciences are
to be criticised by the restless spirit of our
reforming age, the exact sciences are indeed
well able to take care of themselves. And as
for religion, if its fortunes have indeed,
of late, deeply troubled and perplexed many
gentle hearts, still both believers and doubters
have now generally come to view with a cer
tain resignation this aspect of the fate of our
time, whether they regard religious doubt as

5

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

the result of God s way of dealing with a way
ward world, or as a sign of man s transition
to a higher stage of enlightenment.

But restlessness regarding the very founda
tions of morality - - that seems to many of us
especially discouraging. For that concerns
both the seen and the unseen world, both
the truths that justify the toil spent upon
exact science, and the hopes for the love of
which the religions of men have seemed dear.
For what is science worth, and what is religion
worth, if human life itself, for whose ennoble
ment science and religion have both labored,
has no genuine moral standards by which
one may measure its value ? If, then, our
moral standards themselves are questioned,
the iron of doubt so some of us feel
seems to enter our very hearts.

I

In view, then, of the fact that the modern
tendency to revise traditions has inevitably
extended itself, in new ways, to the region
of morals, I suppose that a study of some of

6

NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY

the foundations of the moral life is a timely
undertaking. It is such an undertaking that
I propose as the task of the present course of
lectures. My purpose, in these discussions,
is both a philosophical and a practical pur
pose. I should indeed be glad, if there were
time, to attempt, in your company, a systematic
review of all the main problems of philosoph
ical ethics. That is, I should like, were that
possible, to discuss with you at length the
nature, the foundation, and the truth of the
moral law, approaching that problem from
all those various sides which interest philoso
phers. And, as a fact, I shall indeed venture
to say something, in the course of these lec
tures, regarding each of these topics. But
I well know that there is no space, in eight
lectures, for any adequate treatment of that
branch of philosophy which is called Ethics.
Nor do you come here merely or mainly for
the sake of hearing what a student of philoso
phy chances to think about the problems of his
own calling. Accordingly, I shall not try, in
this place, to state to you any system of moral

7

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

philosophy. Rather is it the other aspect of
my purpose in appealing to you the prac
tical aspect, which I must especially try to bear
in mind throughout these lectures.

Our age, as I have said, is a good deal per
plexed regarding its moral ideals and its stand
ards of duty. It has doubts about what is
really the best plan of human life. This per
plexity is not wholly due to any peculiar way
wardness of our time, or to any general lack
of moral seriousness. It is just our moral
leaders, our reformers, our prophets, who most
perplex us. Whether these revolutionary moral
teachers are right or wrong, they beset us,
they give us no rest, they call in doubt our
moral judgments, they undertake to "trans
mute values." And the result, for many of us,
is a practical result. It tends to deprive us
of that confidence which we all need in order to
be ready to do good works. It threatens to par
alyze the effectiveness of many conscientious
people. Hence any effort to reason calmly
and constructivelv about the foundations of the

/

moral life may serve, not merely to clarify our

8

NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY

minds, but to give vigor to our deeds. In these
lectures, then, I shall ask you to think indeed
about moral problems, but to think for the
sake of action. I shall try to give you some
fragments of a moral philosophy; but I shall
try to justify the philosophy through its appli
cation to life. I do not much care whether
you agree with the letter of any of my philo
sophical formulas ; but I do want to bring to
your consciousness, by means of these formu
las, a certain spirit in terms of which you may
henceforth be helped to interpret the life that
we all in common need to live. Meanwhile,
I do not want merely to refute those reformers
and prophets of whose perplexing assaults
upon our moral traditions I have just spoken,
nor yet do I want to join myself with them in
perplexing you still further. I want, as far as
I can, to indicate some ways whereby we may
clarify and simplify our moral situation.

I indeed agree with the view that, in many
ways, our traditional moral standards ought to
be revised. We need a new heaven and a new
earth. We do well to set out to seek for both,

9

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

however hard or doubtful may be the quest.
In so far as our restlessness about moral
matters our unsettlement implies a sense
of this need, it is a good thing. To use a com
parison suggested by modern Biblical criticism
our conventional morality is indeed a sort
of Pentateuch, made up of many ancient docu
ments. It has often been edited afresh. It
needs critical re examination. I am a student
of philosophy. My principal business has
always been criticism. I shall propose noth
ing in this course which I have not tried to
submit to critical standards, and to revise
repeatedly.

But, on the other hand, I do not believe that
unsettlement is finality. Nor to my mind is
the last word of human wisdom this : that the
truth is inaccessible. Nor yet is the last word
of wisdom this : that the truth is merely fluent
and transient. I believe in the eternal. I am
in quest of the eternal. As to moral stand
ards, in particular, I do not like that mere
homesickness and spiritual estrangement, and
that confusion of mind about moral ideals,

10

NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY

which is nowadays too common. I want to
know the way that leads our human practical
life homewards, even if that way prove to be
infinitely long. I am discontented with mere
discontent. I want, as well as I can, not
merely to help you to revise some of your
moral standards, but to help you to give to this
revision some definitive form and tendency,
some image and hint of finality.

Moreover, since moral standards, as An
tigone said, are not of to-day or yesterday,
I believe that revision does not mean, in this
field, a mere break with the past. I myself
have spent my life in revising my opinions.
And yet, whenever I have most carefully re
vised my moral standards, I am always able to
see, upon reviewing my course of thought,
that at best I have been finding out, in some
new light, the true meaning that was latent
in old traditions. Those traditions were often
better in spirit than the fathers knew. We
who revise may sometimes be able to see this
better meaning that was latent in forms such
as are now antiquated, and perhaps, in their

11

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

old literal interpretation, even mischievous.
Revision does not mean mere destruction. We
can often say to tradition : That which thou
sowest is not quickened except it die. But
we can sometimes see in the world of opinion
a sort of resurrection of the dead, a resur
rection wherein what was indeed justly sown
in dishonor is raised in honor, glorified,
and perhaps incorruptible. Let us bury the
natural body of tradition. What we want is
its glorified body and its immortal soul.

II

I have entitled these lectures, "The Phi
losophy of Loyalty." I may as well confess
at once that my title was suggested to me, early
last summer, by a book that I read a recent
work by a distinguished ethnologist, Dr. Ru
dolf Steinmetz of The Hague, entitled "The
Philosophy of War." War and loyalty have
been, in the past, two very closely associated
ideas. It will be part of the task of these lec
tures to break up, so far as I can, in your own
minds, that ancient and disastrous association,

12

NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY

and to show how much the true conception
of loyalty has been obscured by viewing the
warrior as the most typical representative of
rational loyalty. -Siejnjnefe, however, accepts, /^
in this respect, the traditional view. According
to him, war gives an opportunity for loyal
devotion ^o notable and important that, IT"
war were altogether abolished, one of the
greatest goods of civilization would thereby be
hopelessly lost. I am keenly conscious of the
sharp contrast between Steinmetz s theory of

v^

loyalty and my own. I agree with Steinmetz,
as you will later see, regarding the significance
of loyalty as a central principle of the moral
life. I disagree with him very profoundly as
to the relation of war both to true loyalty and
to civilization in general. The very contrast
has suggested to me the adoption of the form
of title which Steinmetz has used.

The phrase, "Philosophy of Loyalty," is
intended to indicate first, that we are here to
consider loyalty as an ethical principle. For
philosophy deals with first principles. And
secondly, my title means to suggest that we

13

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

are to view the matter critically and dis
criminatingly, as well as practically. For
philosophy is essentially a criticism of life.
Not everything, then, that calls itself loyalty,
and not every form of loyalty, shall be put in
our discussion on the same level with every
other moral quality that uses or that deserves
the ancient name in question. Moreover,
the term "loyalty" comes to us as a good old^
popular wordT without any exact definition.
We are hereafter to define ourjterm as .pre
cisely as possible, yet so as to preserve the
spirit of the former usage. In estimating the
place of loyalty in the moral life, we are, more
over, to follow neither traditional authority
nor the voice of private prejudice. We are
to use our reason as best we can ; for philoso
phy is an effort to think out the reasons for
our opinions. We are not to praise blindly,
nor to condemn according to our moods.
Where loyalty seems to be a good, we are to
see why; when what men call loyalty leads
them astray, we are to find wherein the fault
lies. Since loyalty is a relative term, and al-

14

NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY

ways implies that there is some object, some
cause, to which any given loyalty is to be shown,
we must consider what are the fitting objects
of loyalty. In attempting an answer to these
various questions, our philosophy of loyalty
must try to delve down to the roots of human
conduct, the grounds for our moral standards,
as far as our time permits.

But when all these efforts have been made
towards a philosophical treatment of our topic,
when certain discriminations between true
and mistaken loyalty have been defined, when
we have insisted upon the fitting objects of
loyalty, and have throughout indicated our
reasons for our theses, there will then stand
out one great practical lesson, which I shall
try to illustrate from the start, and to bring
to its fruition as our lectures close. And the
lesson will be this : In loyalty, when loyalty is N >Jf
properly defined, is the fulfilment of the whole
moral law. You can truthfully centre your en
tire moral world about a rational conception
of loyalty. Justice, charity, industry, wisdom,
spirituality, are all definable in terms of

15

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

enlightened loyalty. And, as I shall maintain,
this very way of viewing the moral world -
this deliberate centralization of all the duties
and of all the virtues about the one conception
of rational loyalty is of great service as a
means of clarifying and simplifying the tangled
moral problems of our lives and of our age.

Thus, then, I state the task which our title
is intended to set before us. The rest of this
opening lecture must be devoted to clearing
our way and to a merely preliminary and
tentative view of our topic. I must first at
tempt a partial and provisional definition of
the term "loyalty" as I shall use that term.
I wish that I could begin with a final and ade
quate definition; but I cannot. Why I can
not, you will see in later lectures. At the mo
ment I shall try to direct your minds, as well
as I can, merely to some of the features that
are essential to my conception of loyalty.

Ill

Loyalty shall mean, according to this .pre^
liminary definition : The willing and practical

16

NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY

and thoroughgoing devotion^ey a person to a
cause... A man is loyal^BenTfirst, he has some
cause to which he is loyal ; when, secondly, he
willingly and thoroughly devotes himself to
this cause ; and when, thirdly, he expresses his
devotion in some sustained and practical way,
by acting steadily in the service of his cause.
Instances of loyalty are : The devotion of a
patriot to his country, when this devotion leads
him actually to live and perhaps to die for his
country ; the devotion of a martyr to his reli
gion; the devotion of a ship s captain to the
requirements of his office when, after a disaster,
he works steadily for his ship and for the
saving of his ship s company until the last
possible service is accomplished, so that he is
the last man to leave the ship, and is ready if
need be to go down with his ship.

Such cases of loyalty are typical. They
involve, I have said, the willingness of the loyal
man to do his service. The loyal man s cause
is his cause by virtue of the assent of his own
will. His devotion is his own. He chooses,
it, or, at all events, approves it. Moreover/
c 17

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

his devotion is a practical one. He does
something. This something serves his cause.
Loyalty is never mere emotion. ._ Adoration
and affection may go with loyalty, but can
never alone constitute loyalty. Further
more, the devotion of the loyal man in
volves a sort of restraint or submission of
his natural desires to his cause. Loyalty
without self-control is impossible. The loyal
man serves. That is, he does not merely
follow his own impulses. He looks to his
cause for guidance. This cause tells him
what to do, and he does it. His devotion,
furthermore, is entire. He is ready to live
or to die as the cause directs.

And now for a further word about the hard
est part of this preliminary definition of loyalty :
A loyal man, I have said, has a cause. I do
not yet say that he has a good cause. He
might have a bad one. I do not say, as yet,
what makes a cause a good one, and worthy of
loyalty. All that is to be considered here
after. But this I now premise : If one js.
loyal, he has a cause which he indeed per
is

NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY

sonally values. Otherwise, how could he be
devoteoTto it ? He therefore takes interest in
the cause, loves it, is well pleased with it.
On the other hand, loyalty never means the
mere emotion of love for your cause, and never
means^merely following your own pleasure,
viewed as youi^private pleasure and interest.
For if you are loyal, your cause is viewed by
you as something outside of you. Or if, like
your country, your cause includes yourself,
it is still much larger than your private self.
It has its own value, so you as a loyal person
believe. This essential value it would keep
(so you believe) even if your private interest
were left out of account. Your cause you
take, then, to be something objective some
thing that is not your private self. It does not
get its value merely from your being pleased
with it. You believe, on the contrary, that
you love it just because of its own value, which
it has by itself, even if you die. That is just
why one may be ready to die for his cause. In
any case, when the loyal man serves his cause,
he is not seeking his own private advantage.

19

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

Moreover, the cause to which a loyal man is
devoted is never something wholly impersonal.
It concerns other men. Loyalty is social. If
one is a loyal servant of a cause, one has at
least possible fellow-servants. On the other
hand, since a cause, in general, tends to unite
the many fellow-servants in one service, it con
sequently seems to the loyal man to have a
sort of impersonal or superpersonal quality
about it. You can love an individual. But
you can be loyal only to a tie that binds you
and others into some sort of unity, and loyal
to individuals only through the tie. The
cause to which loyalty devotes itself has always
this union of the personal and the seemingly
superindividual about it. It binds many indi
viduals into one service. Loyal lovers, for
instance, are loyal not merely to one another
as separate individuals, but to their love, to
their union, which is something more than
either of them, or even than both of them
viewed as distinct individuals.

So much for a preliminary view of what
loyalty is. Our definition is not complete.

20

NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY

It raises rather than solves problems about the
nature of loyalty. But thus indeed we get a
first notion of the general nature of loyalty.

IV

But now for a next step. Many people find
that they have a need of loyalty. Loyalty is
a good thing for them. If you ask, however,
why loyalty may be needed by a given man,
the answer may be very complex. A patriot
may, in your opinion, need loyalty, first because
his country needs his service, and, as you add,
he actually owes this service, and so needs to
do his duty, viz. to be loyal. This first way
of stating a given man s need of a given loyalty,
turns upon asserting that a specific cause
rightly requires of a certain man a certain
service. The cause, as one holds, is good
and worthy. This man actually ought to
serve just that cause. Hence he stands in
need of loyalty, and of just this loyalty.

But in order thus to define this man s need
of loyalty, you have to determine what causes
are worthy of loyalty, and why this man ought

21

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

to serve his own cause. To answer such ques
tions would apparently presuppose a whole
system of morals, a system which at this
stage of our argument we have not yet in sight.
But there is another, a simpler, and, at
the outset, a lower way of estimating the value
of loyalty. One may, for the time, abstract
from all questions as to the value of causes.
Whether a man is loyal to a good cause or to
a bad cause, his own personal attitude, when
he is loyal, has a certain general quality.
Whoever is loyal, whatever be his cause, is
devoted, is active, surrenders his private self-
will, controls himself, is in love with his cause,
and believes in it. The loyal man is thus in
a certain state of mind which has its own value
for himself. To live a loyal life, whatever be
one s cause, is to live in a way which is certainly
free from many well-known sources of inner
dissatisfaction. Thus hesitancy is often cor
rected by loyalty; for the cause plainly tells
the loyal man what to do. Loyalty, again,
tends to unify life, to give it centre, fixity,
stability.

22

NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY

Well, these aspects of loyalty are, so far
as they go, good for the loyal man. We may
therefore define our need of loyalty in a
certain preliminary way. We may take what
is indeed a lower view of loyalty, regarding
it, for the moment, in deliberate abstraction
from the cause to which one is loyal. We
may thus regard loyalty, for the moment,
just as a personal attitude, which is good for
the loyal man himself.

Now this lower view of our need of loyalty
is the one to which in the rest of this lecture I
want you to attend. All that I now say is
preliminary. Results belong later. Let us
simply abstract from the question whether a
man s cause is objectively worthy of his loyalty
or not. Let us ask : What does a man gain
by being loyal ? Suppose that some cause,
outside of and also inclusive of his private
self, so appeals to a man that he believes it to
be worthy, and becomes heartily loyal co it.
What good does he get personally out of his
loyalty? In order to answer this question,
even in this preliminary way, I must indeed go

23

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

rather far afield, and define for you, still very
tentatively, one of the best-known and hardest
of the problems of our personal life.

V

What do we live for? What is our duty?
What is the true ideal of life? What is the
true difference between right and wrong?
What is the true good which we all need ?
Whoever begins seriously to consider such
questions as these soon observes certain great
truths about the moral life which he must take
into account if his enterprise is to succeed,
that is, if he is ever to answer these questions.

The first truth is this : We all of us first
learned about what we ought to do, about
what our ideal should be, and in general about
the moral law, through some authority external
to our own wills. Our teachers, our parents,
our playmates, society, custom, or perhaps
some church, --these taught us about one
or another aspect of right and wrong. The
moral law came to us from without. It

24

NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY

often seemed to us, in so far, something other
than our will, something threatening or socially
compelling, or externally restraining. In so
far as our moral training is still incomplete,
the moral law may at any moment have to
assume afresh this air of an external authority
merely in order to win our due attention. But
if we have learned the moral law, or any part
of it, and if we do not ask any longer how we
first learned, or how we may still have to learn
afresh our duty, but if, on the contrary, we
rather ask: "What reason can I now give to
myself why a given act is truly right ? What
reason can I give why my duty is my duty?"
-then, indeed, we find that no external au
thority, viewed merely as external, can give
one any reason why an act is truly right or
wrong. Only a calm and reasonable view of
what it is that I myself really will, only
this can decide such a question. My duty is
simply my own will brought to my clear self-
consciousness. That which I can rightly view
as good for me is simply the object of my own
deepest desire set plainly before my insight.

25

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

For your own will and your own desire, once
fully brought to self -consciousness, furnish the
only valid reason for you to know what is
right and good.

This comment which I now make upon the
nature of the moral law is familiar to every
serious student of ethics. In one form or
another this fact, that the ultimate moral au
thority for each of us is determined by our own
rational will, is admitted even by apparently
extreme partisans of authority. Socrates long
ago announced the principle in question when
he taught that no man is willingly base. Plato
and Aristotle employed it in developing their
ethical doctrines. When St. Augustine, in a
familiar passage in his Confessions, regards
God s will as that in which, and in which alone,
our wills can find rest and peace, he indeed
makes God s will the rule of life ; but he also
shows that the reason why each of us, if en
lightened, recognizes the divine will as right,
is that, in Augustine s opinion, God has so
made us for himself that our own wills are by
nature inwardly restless until they rest in har-

26

NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY

mony with God s will. Our restlessness, then,
so long as we are out of this harmony, gives
us the reason why we find it right, if we are
enlightened, to surrender our self-will.

If you want to find out, then, what is right
and what is good for you, bring your own will
to self -consciousness. Your duty is what you
yourself will to do in so far as you clearly dis
cover who you are, and what your place in the
world is. This is, indeed, a first principle of
all ethical inquiry. Kant called it the Prin
ciple of the Autonomy or self-direction of the
rational will of each moral being.

But now there stands beside this first prin
ciple a second principle, equally inevitable and
equally important. This principle is, that I
can never find out what my ow r n will is by
merely brooding over my natural desires, or
by following my momentary caprices. For by
nature I am a sort of meeting place of count
less streams of ancestral tendency. From
moment to moment, if you consider me apart
from my training, I am a collection of im
pulses. There is no one desire that is always

27

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

present to me. Left to myself alone, I can
never find out what my will is.

You may interpose here the familiar thesis
that there is one desire which I always have,
namely, the desire to escape from pain and to
get pleasure. But as soon as you try to ad
just this thesis to the facts of life, it is a thesis
which simplifies nothing, and which at best
simply gives me back again, under new names,
that chaos of conflicting passions and in
terests which constitutes, apart from training,
my natural life. What we naturally desire
is determined for us by our countless instincts
and by whatever training they have received.
We want to breathe, to eat, to walk, to run,
to speak, to see, to hear, to love, to fight, and,
amongst other things, we want to be more or
less reasonable. Now, if one of these instinc
tive wants of ours drives us at any moment
to action, we normally take pleasure in such
action, in so far as it succeeds. For action
in accordance with desire means relief from
tension ; and that is usually accompanied with
pleasure. On the other hand, a thwarted

28

NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY

activity gives us pain. But only under special
circumstances does this resulting pleasure or
pain of the successful or of the hindered activ
ity come to constitute a principal object of our
desire. We all do like pleasure, and we all
do shun pain. But a great deal of what we
desire is desired by instinct, apart from the
memory or the expectation of pleasure and
pain, and often counter to the warnings that
pleasure and pain have given to us. It is
normal to desire food because one is hungry,
rather than because one loves the pleasures of
the table. It is water that the thirsty man
in the desert longs for, rather than pleasure,
and rather than even mere relief from pain as
such. For much of the pain appears to his
consciousness as largely due to his longing for
water. Pain, then, is indeed an evil, but it is
in part secondary to thwarted desire; while,
when pain appears as a brute fact of our
feelings, which we indeed hate, such pain is
even then only one amongst the many ills of
life, only one of the many undesirable objects.
The burnt child, indeed, dreads the fire;

29

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

but the climbing child, instinctively loving the
ways of his remote arboreal ancestors, is little
deterred by the pain of an occasional fall.

Furthermore, if I even admitted that I
always desire pleasure and relief from pain,
and nothing else, I should not learn from such
a principle what it is that, on the whole, I
am to will to do, in order to express my desire
for pleasure, and in order to escape from
pain. For no art is harder than the art of
pleasure seeking. I can never learn that art
alone by myself. And so I cannot define my
own will, and hence cannot define my duty,
merely in terms of pleasure and pain.

VI

So far, then, we have a rather paradoxical
situation before us. Yet it is the moral situa
tion of every one of us. If I am to know my
duty, I must consult my own reasonable will.
I alone can show myself why I view this or this
as my duty. But on the other hand, if I
merely look within myself to find what it is

30

NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY

that I will, my own private individual nature,
apart from due training, never gives me any
answer to the question : What do I will ?
By nature I am a victim of my ancestry, a
mass of world-old passions and impulses, de
siring and suffering in constantly new ways as
my circumstances change, and as one or an
other of my natural impulses comes to the
front. By nature, then, apart from a specific
training, I have no personal will of my own.
One of the principal tasks of my life is to learn
to have a will of my own. To learn your own
will, yes, to create your own will, is one of
the largest of your human undertakings.

Here, then, is the paradox. I, and only I,
whenever I come to my own, can morally
justify to myself my own plan of life. No
outer authority can ever give me the true rea
son for my duty. Yet I, left to myself, can
never find a plan of life. I have no inborn
ideal naturally present within myself. By
nature I simply go on crying out in a sort of
chaotic self-will, according as the momentary
play of desire determines.

31

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

Whence, then, can I learn any plan of life ?
The moral education of any civilized person
easily reminds you how this question is, in
one respect, very partially, but, so far as
ordinary training goes, constantly answered.
One gets one s various plans of life suggested
through the models that are set before each
one of us by his fellows. Plans of life first
come to us in connection with our endless
imitative activities. These imitative pro
cesses begin in our infancy, and run on
through our whole life. We learn to play,
to speak, to enter into our social realm, to
take part in the ways and so in the life of
mankind. This imitative social activity is
itself due to our instincts as social beings.
But in turn the social activities are the ones
that first tend to organize all of our instincts,
to give unity to our passions and impulses,
to transform our natural chaos of desires
into some sort of order usually, indeed, a
very imperfect order. It is our social exist
ence, then, as imitative beings, --it is this
that suggests to us the sorts of plans of life

32

NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY

which we get when we learn a calling, when
we find a business in life, when we discover
our place in the social world. And so our
actual plans of life, namely, our callings,
our more or less settled daily activities, come
to us from without. We in so far learn what
our own will is by first imitating the wills of
others.

Yet no, --this, once more, is never the
whole truth about our social situation, and is
still less the whole truth about our moral
situation. By ourselves alone, we have said,
we can never discover in our own inner life
any one plan of life that expresses our genuine
will. So then, we have said, all of our plans
get suggested to us by the social order in
which we grow up. But on the other hand,
our social training gives us a mass of varying
plans of life, --plans that are not utterly
chaotic, indeed, but imperfectly ordered,
mere routine, not ideal life. Moreover, social
training tends not only to teach us the way of
other people, but to heighten by contrast our
vague natural sense of the importance of

D 33

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

having our own way. Social training stimu
lates the will of the individual self, and also
teaches this self customs and devices for
self-expression. We never merely imitate.
Conformity attracts, but also wearies us.
Meanwhile, even by imitation, we often learn
how to possess, and then to carry out, our
own self-will. For instance, we learn speech
first by imitation ; but henceforth we love to
hear ourselves talk; and our whole plan of
life gets affected accordingly. Speech has,
indeed, its origin in social conformity. Yet
the tongue is an unruly member, and wags
rebelliously. Teach men customs, and you
equip them with weapons for expressing their
own personalities. As you train the social
being, you make use of his natural submis-
siveness. But as a result of your training he
forms plans ; he interprets these plans with
reference to his own personal interests ; he
becomes aware who he is ; and he may end
by becoming, if not original, then at least
obstreperous. And thus society is con
stantly engaged in training up children who

34

NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY

may, and often do, rebel against their mother.
Social conformity gives us social power.
Such power brings to us a consciousness of
who and what we are. Now, for the first
time, we begin to have a real will of our own.
And hereupon we may discover this will to
be in sharp conflict with the will of society.
This is what normally happens to most of us,
for a time at least, in youth.

You see, so far, how the whole process
upon which man s moral life depends in
volves this seemingly endless play of inner
and outer. How shall my duty be defined ?
Only by my own will, whenever that will is
brought to rational self -consciousness. But
what is my will ? By nature I know not ;
for by birth I am a mere eddy in the turbulent
stream of inherited human passion. How,
then, shall I get a will of my own ? Only
through social training. That indeed gives
me plans, for it teaches me the settled ways
of my world. Yet no, for such training
really teaches me rather the arts whereby I
may express myself. It makes me clever,

35

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

ambitious, often rebellious, and in so far it
teaches me how to plan opposition to the
social order. The circular process thus
briefly indicated goes on throughout the lives
of many of us. It appears in new forms at
various stages of our growth. At any mo
ment we may meet new problems of right
and wrong, relating to our plans of life. We
hereupon look within, at what we call our own
conscience, to find out what our duty is.
But, as we do so, we discover, too often, what
wayward and blind guides our own hearts so
far are. So we look without, in order to un
derstand better the ways of the social world.
We cannot see the inner light. Let us try the
outer one. These ways of the world appeal
to our imitativeness, and so we learn from
the other people how we ourselves are in this
case to live. Yet no, this very learning
often makes us aware of our personal contrast
with other people, and so makes us self-con
scious, individualistic, critical, rebellious ; and
again we are thrown back on ourselves for
guidance. Seeing the world s way afresh, I

36

NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY

see that it is not my way. I revive. I assert
myself. My duty, I say, is my own. And
so, perhaps, I go back again to my own way
ward heart.

It is this sort of process which goes on,
sometimes in a hopelessly circular way, when,
in some complicated situation, you are mor
ally perplexed, and after much inner brood
ing give up deciding by yourself and appeal
to friends for advice. The advice at first
pleases you, but soon may arouse your self-
will more than before. You may become,
as a result, more wayward and sometimes
more perplexed, the longer you continue
this sort of inquiry. We all know what it is
to seek advice, just with the result of finding
out what it is that we do not want to do.

Neither within nor without, then, do I find
what seems to me a settled authority, a
settled and harmonious plan of life, unless,
indeed, one happy sort of union takes place
between the inner and the outer, between my
social world and myself, between my natural
waywardness and the ways of my fellows.

37

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

This happy union is the one that takes place
whenever my mere social conformity, my
docility as an imitative creature, turns into
exactly that which, in these lectures, I shall
call loyalty. Let us consider what happens
in such cases.

VII

Suppose a being whose social conformity
has been sufficient to enable him to learn
many skilful social arts, arts of speech, of
prowess in contest, of influence over other
men. Suppose that these arts have at the
same time aw r akened this man s pride, his
self-confidence, his disposition to assert him
self. Such a man will have in him a good
deal of what you can well call social will.
He will be no mere anarchist. He will have
been trained into much obedience. He will
be no natural enemy of society, unless, indeed,
fortune has given him extraordinary oppor
tunities to win his way without scruples. On
the other hand, this man must acquire a good
deal of self-will. He becomes fond of success,

33

NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY

of mastery, of his own demands. To be sure,
he can find within himself no one naturally
sovereign will. He can so far find only a
general determination to define some way of
his own, and to have his own way. Hence
the conflicts of social will and self-will are
inevitable, circular, endless, so long as this is
the whole story of the man s life. By merely
consulting convention, on the one hand, and
his disposition to be somebody, on the other
hand, this man can never find any one final
and consistent plan of life, nor reach any one
definition of his duty.

But now suppose that there appears in this
man s life some one of the greater social pas
sions, such as patriotism well exemplifies.
Let his country be in danger. Let his ele
mental passion for conflict hereupon fuse
with his brotherly love for his own country
men into that fascinating and blood-thirsty
form of humane but furious ecstasy, which is
called the war-spirit. The mood in question
may or may not be justified by the passing
circumstances. For that I now care not. At

39

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

its best the war-spirit is no very clear or ra
tional state of anybody s mind. But one
reason why men may love this spirit is that
when it comes, it seems at once to define a
plan of life, a plan which solves the con
flicts of self-will and conformity. This plan
has two features: (1) it is through and
through a social plan, obedient to the gen
eral will of one s country, submissive; (2) it
is through and through an exaltation of the
self, of the inner man, who now feels glori
fied through his sacrifice, dignified in his self-
surrender, glad to be his country s servant
and martyr, yet sure that through this very
readiness for self-destruction he wins the
rank of hero.

Well, if the man whose case we are suppos
ing gets possessed by some such passion as
this, he wins for the moment the conscious
ness of what I call loyalty. This loyalty no
longer knows anything about the old circular
conflicts of self-will and of conformity. The
self, at such moments, looks indeed outwards
for its plan of life. "The country needs me,"

40

NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY

it says. It looks, meanwhile, inwards for
the inspiring justification of this plan.
"Honor, the hero s crown, the soldier s death,
the patriot s devotion these," it says, "are
my will. I am not giving up this will of
mine. It is my pride, my glory, my self-
assertion, to be ready at my country s call."
And now there is no conflict of outer and
inner.

How wise or how enduring or how prac
tical such a passion may prove, I do not
yet consider. What I point out is that this
war-spirit, for the time at least, makes self-
sacrifice seem to be self-expression, makes
obedience to the country s call seem to be
the proudest sort of display of one s own pow
ers. Honor now means submission, and to
obey means to have one s way. Power and
service are at one. Conformity is no longer
opposed to having one s own will. One has
no will but that of the country.

As a mere fact of human nature, then, there
are social passions which actually tend to do
at once two things: (1) to intensify our self-

41

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

consciousness, to make us more than ever
determined to express our own will and more
than ever sure of our own rights, of our own
strength, of our dignity, of our power, of our
value; (2) to make obvious to us that this
our will has no purpose but to do the will of
some fascinating social power. This social
power is the cause to which we are loyal.

Loyalty, then, fixes our attention upon some
one cause, bids us look without ourselves to
see what this unified cause is, shows us thus
some one plan of action, and then says to us,
"In this cause is your life, your will, your
opportunity, your fulfilment."

Thus loyalty, viewed merely as a personal
attitude, solves the paradox of our ordinary
existence, by showing us outside of ourselves
the cause which is to be served, and inside of
ourselves the will which delights to do this
service, and which is not thwarted but en
riched and expressed in such service.

I have used patriotism and the war-spirit
merely as a first and familiar illustration of
loyalty. But now, as we shall later see, there

42

NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY

is no necessary connection between loyalty
and war; and there are many other forms of
loyalty besides the patriotic forms. Loyalty
has its domestic, its religious, its commercial,
its professional forms, and many other forms
as well. The essence of it, whatever forms
it may take, is, as I conceive the matter, this :
Since no man can find a plan of life by merely
looking within his own chaotic nature, he has
to look without, to the world of social conven
tions, deeds, and causes. Now, a loyal man
is one who has found, and who sees, neither
mere individual fellow-men to be loved or
hated, nor mere conventions, nor customs,
nor laws to be obeyed, but some social cause,
or some system of causes, so rich, so well knit,
and, to him, so fascinating, and withal so
kindly in its appeal to his natural self-will,
that he says to his cause: Thy will is mine
and mine is thine. In thee I do not lose but
find myself, living intensely in proportion as
I live for thee." If one could find such a
cause, and hold it for his lifetime before his
mind, clearly observing it, passionately loving

43

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

it, and yet calmly understanding it, and stead
ily and practically serving it, he would have
one plan of life, and this plan of life would
be his own plan, his own will set before him,
expressing all that his self-will has ever sought.
Yet this plan would also be a plan of obedience,
because it would mean living for the cause.

Now, in all ages of civilized life there have
been people who have won in some form a
consciousness of loyalty, and who have held
to such a consciousness through life. Such
people may or may not have been right in
their choice of a cause. But at least they have
exemplified through their loyalty one feature of
a rational moral life. They have known what
it was to have unity of purpose.

And again, the loyal have known what it
was to be free from moral doubts and scruples.
Their cause has been their conscience. It
has told them what to do. They have lis
tened and obeyed, not because of what they
took to be blind convention, not because of a
fear of external authority, not even because of
what seemed to themselves any purely pri-

44

NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY

vate and personal intuition, but because,
when they have looked first outwards at their
cause, and then inwards at themselves, they
have found themselves worthless in their own
eyes, except when viewed as active, as confi
dently devoted, as willing instruments of
their cause. Their cause has forbidden them
to doubt; it has said: "You are mine, you
cannot do otherwise." And they have said
to the cause : " I am, even of my own will,
thine. I have no will except thy will. Take
me, use me, control me, and even thereby
fulfil me and exalt me." That is again the
speech of the devoted patriots, soldiers, moth
ers, and martyrs of our race. They have had
the grace of this willing, this active loyalty.

Now, people loyal in this sense have surely
existed in the world, and, as you all know, the
loyal still exist amongst us. And I beg you
not to object to me, at this point, that such
devoted people have often been loyal to very
bad causes; or that different people have
been loyal to causes which were in deadly war
with one another, so that loyal people must

45

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

often have been falsely guided. I beg you,
above all, not to interpose here the objection
that our modern doubters concerning moral
problems simply cannot at present see to
what one cause they ought to be loyal, so that
just herein, just in our inability to see a fitting
and central object of loyalty, lies the root of
our modern moral confusion and distraction.
All those possible objections are indeed per
fectly fair considerations. I shall deal with
them in due time ; and I am just as earnestly
aware of them as you can be. But just now
we are getting our first glimpse of our future
philosophy of loyalty. All that you can say
of the defects of loyalty leaves still untouched
the one great fact that, if you want to find
a way of living which surmounts doubts, and
centralizes your powers, it must be some such
a way as all the loyal in common have trodden,
since first loyalty was known amongst men.
What form of loyalty is the right one, we are
hereafter to see. But unless you can find
some sort of loyalty, you cannot find unity
and peace in your active living. You must

46

NATURE AND NEED OF LOYALTY

find, then, a cause that is really worthy of the
sort of devotion that the soldiers, rushing
cheerfully to certain death, have felt for
their clan or for their country, and that the
martyrs have shown on behalf of their faith.
This cause must be indeed rational, worthy,
and no object of a false devotion. But once
found, it must become your conscience, must
tell you the truth about your duty, and must
unify, as from without and from above, your
motives, your special ideals, and your plans.
You ought, I say, to find such a cause, if in
deed there be any ought at all. And this
is my first hint of our moral code.

But you repeat, perhaps in bewilderment,
your question: Where, in our distracted
modern world, in this time when cause wars
with cause, and when all old moral standards
are remorselessly criticised and doubted, are
we to find such a cause a cause, all-embrac
ing, definite, rationally compelling, supreme,
certain, and fit to centralize life ? What
cause is there that for us would rationally
justify a martyr s devotion?" I reply: "A

47

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

perfectly simple consideration, derived from
a study of the very spirit of loyalty itself, as
this spirit is manifested by all the loyal, will
soon furnish to us the unmistakable answer
to this question." For the moment we have
won our first distant glimpse of what I mean
by the general nature of loyalty, and by our
common need of loyalty.

48

II

INDIVIDUALISM

LECTURE II

INDIVIDUALISM

IN my opening lecture I undertook to
define the personal attitude which I
called loyalty, and to show that, for our own
individual good, we all need loyalty, and need
to find causes to which we can be loyal. This
was but the beginning of our philosophy of
loyalty. Before I take my next step, I must
ask you briefly to review the results that we
have already reached.

By loyalty, as you remember, I mean in this
preliminary view of loyalty, the willing and
practical and thoroughgoing devotion of a
person to a cause. By a cause that is adapted
to call forth loyalty I mean, for the first,
something which seems to the loyal person
to be larger than his private self, and so to be,
in some respect, external to his purely in-

51

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

dividual will. This cause must, in the second
place, unite him with other persons by some
social tie, such as a personal friendship, or
his family, or the state may, in a given case,
represent. The cause, therefore, to which
the loyal man is devoted, is something that
appears to him to be at once personal (since
it concerns both himself and other people),
and impersonal, or rather, if regarded from
a purely human point of view, superpersonal,
because it links several human selves, perhaps
a vast number of selves, into some higher
social unity. You cannot be loyal to a merely
impersonal abstraction; and you also cannot
be loyal simply to a collection of various sepa
rate persons, viewed merely as a collection.
Where there is an object of loyalty, there is,
then, an union of various selves into one life.
This union constitutes a cause to which one
may indeed be loyal, if such is his disposition.
And such an union of many in one, if known
to anybody for whom a person means merely
a human person, appears to be something
impersonal or superpersonal, just because it

52

INDIVIDUALISM

is more than all those separate and private
personalities whom it joins. Yet it is also
intensely personal, because the union is in
deed an union of selves, and so not a merely
artificial abstraction.

That such causes and that a thoroughgoing,
willing, practical devotion to them, such as
our definition of loyalty demands that, I
say, such things exist in the world, I tried at
the last time to illustrate to you. My illus
trations were inadequate; for it is simply
impossible to show you briefly how Protean
the forms of human loyalty are, and yet how
similar, amidst all this endless variety of
forms, the spirit of loyalty remains, whatever
the causes in question may be, and whoever
the loyal people are. We began, of course,
with marked, traditional, and familiar illus
trations. The loyal captain, steadfastly stand
ing by his sinking ship until his last possible
duty for the service to which he belongs has
been accomplished ; the loyal patriot, eager to
devote every power to living, and, if need be,
to dying for his endangered country; the

53

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

loyal religious martyr, faithful unto death,
these are indeed impressive and typical in
stances of loyalty; but they are not the only
possible instances. Anybody who, for a time,
is in charge of the lives of others (for instance,
any one who takes a party of children on a
pleasure trip) may have the opportunity to
possess and to show as genuine a loyalty as
does the true-hearted captain of the sinking
ship. For danger is everywhere, and to be in
charge of life is always an occasion for loyalty.
Anybody who has friends may devote his life
to some cause which his friendship defines
for him and makes, in his eyes, sacred. Any
body who has given his word in a serious mat
ter may come to think himself called upon to
sacrifice every private advantage in order to
keep his word. Thus, then, anything which
can link various people by fixed social ties
may suggest to somebody the opportunity for
a lifelong loyalty. The loyal are, therefore,
to be found in all orders of society. They
may be of very various degrees of intelligence,
of power, of effectiveness. Wherever there

INDIVIDUALISM

are mothers and brethren, and kindred of
any degree, and social organizations of any
type ; wherever men accept offices, or pledge
their word, or, as in the pursuit of science or
of art, cooperate in the search for truth and
for beauty, there are to be found causes
which may appeal to the loyal interest of
somebody. Loyalty may thus exist amongst
the lowliest and amongst the loftiest of man
kind. The king and the peasant, the saint
and the worldling, all have their various op
portunities for loyalty. The practical man
of the world and the seemingly lonely student
of science may be equally loyal.

But whatever the cause to which one is
loyal, and whoever it be that is loyal, the
spirit of loyalty is always the one which our
preliminary definition set forth, and which
our former discussion attempted more pre
cisely to describe. Whenever a cause, beyond
your private self, greater than you are, a
cause social in its nature and capable of link
ing into one the wills of various individuals,
a cause thus at once personal and, from the

55

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

purely human point of view, superpersonal,
whenever, I say, such a cause so arouses your
interest that it appears to you worthy to be
served with all your might, with all your soul,
with all your strength, then this cause awakens
in you the spirit of loyalty. If you act out
this spirit, you become, in fact, loyal. And
upon the unity of this spirit, amidst all its
countless varieties, our future argument will
depend. It is essential to that argument to
insist that the humblest, as well as the wisest
and mightiest of men, may share in this one
spirit.

Now, loyalty, thus defined, is, as we have
maintained, something which we all, as hu
man beings, need. That is, we all need to
find causes which shall awaken our loyalty.
I tried to indicate to you at the last time the
grounds for this our common need for loyalty.
In order to do so, I began with a confessedly
lower view of loyalty. I have asked you, for
the time, in this opening study, to abstract al
together from the cause to which any man is
loyal, to leave out of account whether that

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INDIVIDUALISM

cause is or is not in your opinion worthy, and
to begin by considering what good the loyal
man gets out of the personal attitude of loyalty,
whatever be his cause. Only by thus begin
ning can we prepare the way for a higher view
of loyalty.

Loyalty, I have said, be the cause worthy
or unworthy, is for the loyal man a good,
just as, even if his beloved be unworthy, love
may in its place still be a good thing for a
lover. And loyalty is for the loyal man not
only a good, but for him chief amongst all the
moral goods of his life, because it furnishes to
him a personal solution of the hardest of
human practical problems, the problem : "For
w r hat do I live ? Why am I here ? For what
am I good? Why am I needed?"

The natural man, more or less vaguely and
unconsciously, asks such questions as these.
But if he looks merely within his natural self,
he cannot answer them. Within himself he
finds vague cravings for happiness, a chaos
of desires, a medley of conflicting instincts.
He has come

57

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

" Into this universe, the why not knowing,
Nor whence, like water, willy-nilly flowing."

He must, then, in any case consult society in
order to define the purpose of his life. The
social order, however, taken as it comes,
gives him customs, employment, conventions,
laws, and advice, but no one overmastering
ideal. It controls him, but often by the very
show of authority it also inflames his self-
will. It rebukes and amuses ; it threatens
and praises him by turns; but it leaves him
to find out and to justify the sense of his own
life as he can. It solves for him no ultimate
problems of life, so long as his loyalty is
unawakened.

Only a cause, then, an absorbing and fas
cinating social cause, which by his own will
and consent comes to take possession of his
life, as the spirits that a magician summons
might by the magician s own will and con
sent take control of the fortunes of the one
who has called for their aid, only a cause,
dignified by the social unity that it gives to
many human lives, but rendered also vital

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INDIVIDUALISM

for the loyal man by the personal affection
which it awakens in his heart, only such
a cause can unify his outer and inner world.
When such unity comes, it takes in him the
form of an active loyalty. Whatever cause
thus appeals to a man meets therefore one
of his deepest personal needs, and in fact the
very deepest of his moral needs ; namely, the
need of a life task that is at once voluntary
and to his mind worthy.

II

So far the former discussion led us. But
already, at this point, an objection arises,
or rather, there arise a whole host of objections,
-whereof I must take account before you
will be ready to comprehend the philosophy
of loyalty which I am to propose in later lec
tures. These objections, familiar in the present
day, come from the partisans of certain forms
of Individualism which in our modern world
are so prevalent. I shall devote this lecture
to a study of the relations of the spirit of loyalty
to the spirit of individualism. Individualism

59

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

is as Protean as loyalty. Hence my task in
volves meeting various very different objections.
Somewhat more than a year since, I was
attempting to state in the presence of a com
pany of young people my arguments for
loyalty. I was trying to tell that company,
as I am trying to tell you, how much we all
need some form of loyalty as a centralizing
motive in our personal lives. I was also de
ploring the fact that, in our modern American
life, there are so many social motives that seem
to take away from people the true spirit of
loyalty, and to leave them distracted, unsettled
as to their moral standards, uncertain why or
for what they live. After I had said my word,
my hearers were invited to discuss the ques
tion. Amongst those who responded was a
very earnest youth, the son of a Russian immi
grant. My words had awakened my young
friend s righteous indignation. "Loyalty," so
he in effect said, "has been in the past one of
humanity s most disastrous failings and weak
nesses. Tyrants have used the spirit of loyalty
as their principal tool. I am glad," he went

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INDIVIDUALISM

on, "that we are outgrowing loyalty, whatever
its forms or whatever the causes that it serves.
What we want in the future is the training of
individual judgment. We want enlighten
ment and independence. Let us have done
with loyalty."

I need hardly remark that my opponent s
earnestness, his passion for the universal tri
umph of individual freedom, his plainness of
speech, his hatred of oppression, were them
selves symptoms of a very loyal spirit. For he
had his cause. That was plain. It was a
social cause, the one need of the many for
release from the oppressor. He spoke like a
man who was devoted to that cause. I
honored his loyalty to humanity, in so far as
he understood the needs of his fellows. His
spirit, then, as he spoke, simply illustrated
my own thesis. He was awake, resolute,
eager. He had his ideal. And his loyalty to
the cause of the oppressed had given to him this
fine self-possession. He was a living instance
of my view of the value of loyalty to the loyal
man.

61

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

So, in fact, he was not my opponent. But
he thought that he was. And his view of
loyalty, his conception that loyalty is by its
nature, as a spirit of devotion and of self-
sacrifice for a cause, necessarily a spirit of sub
servience, of slavish submission, this view,
I say, although it was clearly refuted by the
very existence of his own loyalty to the cause
of the relief of the people from the oppressor,
was still a misunderstanding of himself and of
life, a misunderstanding such as is nowa
days only too common. Here, then, is one
form which current objections to the spirit of
loyalty often take.

Another and a decidedly different objection
to my own views about loyalty was expressed to
me, also within the past year, by a friend high
in official position in a distant community,
a teacher who has charge of many youth, and
who is profoundly concerned for their moral
welfare. "I wish," he said, "that, if you
address the youth who are under my charge,
you would tell them that loyalty to their vari
ous organizations, to their clubs, to their secret

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INDIVIDUALISM

societies, to their own student body generally,
is no excuse for mischief-makers, and gives to
loyal students no right to encourage one an
other to do mischief, and then to stand to
gether to shield offenders for the sake of
loyalty. Loyalty hereabouts," he in substance
went on, speaking of his own community,
" is a cloak to cover a multitude of sins. What
these youth need is the sense that each individ
ual has his own personal duty, and should de
velop his own conscience, and should not look
to loyalty to excuse him from individual re
sponsibility."

The objection which was thus in substance
contained in my friend s words, was of course
partly an objection to the special causes to
which these students were loyal ; that is, it was
an objection to their clubs, and to their views
about the special rights of the student body.
In so far, of course, this objection does not
yet concern us ; for I am not now estimating
the worth of men s causes, but am considering
only the inner value of the loyal spirit to the
man who has that spirit, whatever be the cause

63

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

to which this man is loyal. In part, however,
this objection was founded upon a well-known
form of ethical individualism, and is an objec
tion that does here concern us. For his own
good, so my critic seemed to hold, each man
needs to develop his own individual sense of
personal duty and of responsibility. Loyalty,
as my critic further held, tends to take the life
out of a young man s conscience, because it
makes him simply look outside of himself to
see what his cause requires him to do. In
other words, loyalty seems to be opposed to
the development of that individual auton
omy of the moral will which, as I told you
in the last lecture, Kant insists upon, and
which all moralists must indeed emphasize
as one of our highest goods. If I look to
my cause to tell me what to do, am I not
resigning my moral birthright ? Must I not
always judge my own duty? Now, does
not loyalty tend to make me ask my club
or my other social cause simply to tell me
what to do ?

And yet, as you see, even the objector who

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INDIVIDUALISM

pointed out this difficulty about loyalty cannot
have been as much my opponent as he seemed
to believe that he was. For he himself, by
virtue of his own autonomous choice of his
career, is a very loyal teacher, devoted to his
office, and loyal to the true welfare of his stu
dents as he sees that welfare. I am sure that
his spirit must be the very loyalty which I
have been describing to you. He is an inde
pendent sort of man, who has chosen his cause
and is now profoundly loyal. Otherwise, how
could he love, as he does, the hard tasks of his
office and live, as he does, in his devotion to
that office, accepting its demands as his own ?
He works like a slave at his own task, and
of course he works lovingly. Yet he seemed
to condemn the loyalty of his students to their
clubs as essentially slavish. Is there not some
misunderstanding here ?

But yet another, and once more a very dif
ferent form of individualism I find, at times,
opposed by my objectors to the loyalty whose
importance I am maintaining. The objection
here in question is familiar. It may be stated

F 65

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

thus: The modern man --yes, the modern
woman also, as we sometimes are told
can be content only with the completest pos
sible self-development and the fullest self-
expression which the conditions of our social
life permit. We all of us have individual
rights, so such an objector vigorously insists.
Duties, perhaps, as he adds, we also occa
sionally have, under rather exceptional, per
haps abnormal and annoying, conditions.
But whether or no the duties get in our way
and hinder our growth, the rights at least
are ours. Now, there is no good equal to win
ning what is your right ; namely, this free
self-expression, this untrammelled play of the
spirit. You have opinions ; utter them. They
are opposed to current moral traditions ; then
so much the better; for when you utter them
you know, because of their unconventional
sound, that they must be your own. Even so,
your social ties prove irksome. Break them.
Form new ones. Is not the free spirit eternally
young ? From this point of view loyalty does
indeed appear to be slavish. Why sacrifice the

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INDIVIDUALISM

one thing that you have, your chance to be
yourself, and nobody else ?

I need not further pursue, at the moment, the
statement of the case for this special type of
modem individualism. In this form indi
vidualism does not stand, like the enthusiasm
of my young Russian, for sympathy with the
oppressed, but rather for the exuberance of the
vitality of certain people who, as I shall here
after try to show, have not yet found out what
to do with themselves. In any case, individ
ualism of this sort, as I have said, is familiar
enough. You know it well in recent literature.
Plays, romances, essays, embody its teachings.
You know this form of individualism also in
real life. You read of its doings in the current
newspapers. As you go about your own daily
business, it sometimes, to show its moral dig
nity, jostles you more than even our modern
congestion of population makes necessary;
or it passes you by all too swiftly and
perilously, in its triumphant and intrepid
self-assertion. In brief, the people who have
more rights than duties have gained a notable

67

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

and distinguished ethical position in our mod
ern world. The selfish we had always with
us. But the divine right to be selfish was never
more ingeniously defended, in the name of the
loftiest spiritual dignity, than it is sometimes
defended and illustrated to-day.

But even now I have not done with stating
the case of my objectors. Still another form
of modern individualism exists, and this form
is again very different from any of the fore
going forms. Yet once more I must let a
friend of mine state the case for this sort of
individualism. This is no longer the enthu
siastic revolt against the oppressor which my
young Russian expressed ; nor is it the interest
in moral independence of judgment which the
teacher of youth emphasized ; nor is it the
type of self-assertion which prefers rights to
duties ; it is, on the contrary, the individualism
of those who seek, and who believe that they
find, an interior spiritual light which guides
them and which relieves them of the need of
any loyalty to externally visible causes. Such
people might themselves sometimes speak of

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INDIVIDUALISM

their fidelity to their inner vision as a sort of
loyalty. But they would not define their
loyalty in the terms which I have used in de
fining the loyal spirit. The friend of whom I
have spoken stated the case for such people by
saying: "Loyalty, such as you define, is not
a man s chief good. Spirituality, contempla
tive self-possession, rest in the light of the truth,
interior peace these constitute, if one can
attain to them, man s chief good. Good works
for other men, and what externally appears as
loyal conduct such things may and will
result from the attainment of inner perfection,
but will so result merely because the good soul
overflows, just as, to adapt the famous metaphor
of Plotinus, just as the sun shines. The true
good is to be at one with yourself within. Then
you are at the centre of your world, and what
ever good deeds you ought to do will result from
the mere fact that you are thus self-possessed,
and are therefore also in possession of light and
peace. It is, then, spirituality rather than loy
alty which we principally need." Thus, then,
my friend s objection was stated.

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

I have thus let four different kinds of indi
vidualism state their case, as against my own
thesis that loyalty is man s chief moral good.
Perhaps the foregoing objections are the prin
cipal ones which my thesis in the present day
has to meet; although, as I said, a host of
special objections can be made merely by
varying the form of these. The objections,
as you will have observed, are founded upon
very various and mutually conflicting prin
ciples. Yet each one of them seems somewhat
formidable, especially at this stage of my argu
ment, where I am maintaining, not that
loyalty is good because or in so far as its cause
is objectively and socially a good cause, but
that loyalty is a centrally significant good for
the loyal man himself, apart from the cause
to which he is loyal, and so apart from the use
fulness to other people which his loyalty may
possess.

Ill

The scholastic philosopher, Thomas Aqui
nas, in his famous theological treatise, the
Summa, always, in each one of the articles

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INDIVIDUALISM

into which his work is divided, gives his
opponents the word before he states his own
case. And after thus setting forth in order
the supposed reasons for the very views which
he intends to combat, and immediately before
beginning his detailed argument for the theses
that he proposes to defend, he confronts his
various opponents with some single counter-
consideration, a Scriptural passage, a word
from the Fathers, or whatever brief assertion
will serve his purpose, as a sort of indica
tion to all of his opponents together that they
somehow must be in the wrong. This brief
opening of his confutation is always formally
introduced by the set phrase : Sed contra est,
"But on the contrary stands the fact that,"
etc.

And so now, having sketched various objec
tions, due to equally various forms of individ
ualism, I may venture my own Sed contra est
before I go on to a better statement of my case.
Against all my four opponents stands the fol
lowing fact : -

A little while since the Japanese won much

71

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

admiration from all of us by the absolute
loyalty to their own national cause which they
displayed during their late war. Hereupon
we turned for information to our various au
thorities upon things Japanese, and came to
know something of that oj[pljnojral_cpde Bushido
which Nitobe in his little book has called the
Soul of Japan. Well, whatever our other
viewsregarding Japanese life and policy, I
think that we have now come to see that the
ideal of Bushido, the ancient Japanese type
of loyalty, despite the barbarous life of feuds
and of bloodshed in which it first was born,
had very many elements of wonderful spiritual
power about it. Now, Bushido did indeed in
volve many an ti -individualistic features. But
it never meant to those who believed in it any
sort of mere slavishness. The loyal Japanese
Samurai, as he is described to us by those who
know, never lacked his own sort of self-asser
tion. He never accepted what he took to be
tyranny. He had his chiefs ; but as an indi
vidual, he was proud to serve them. He often
used his own highly trained judgment regard-

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INDIVIDUALISM

ing the^y^pjications of the complex_code_of
honor under which he was reared. He was
fond of what he took to be his rights as a man
of honor. He made much, even childlike, dis
play of his dignity. His costume, his sword,
his bearing, displayed this sense of his im
portance. Yet his ideal at least, and in large
part his practice, as his admirers depict him,
involved a great deal of elaborate cultivation
of a genuine spiritual serenity. His whole
early t raining Jnvolved a __rjepressipn _of _rj vate
emotions, a control over his moods, a deliberate
cheer adje^aj^jofjnmd,_all of which he con
ceived to be_a,_necessary part of his knightly
equipment. Chinese sages, as well as Buddh-
Tstic traditions, influenced his views of the
cultivation of this interior self-possession and
serenity of soul. And yet he was also a man
of the world. RWflrri or. an aranper nf insults
to his hopgr ; and above allLbe ygg loval.1 His
loyalty, in fact, consisted of all these personal
and social virtues together.

This Japanese loyalty of the Samurai was
trained by tne ancient customs of Bushido to

73

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

such freedom and plasticity of conception
and expression that, when the modern reform
came, the feudal loyalties were readily trans
formed, almost at a stroke, into that active
devotion of the individual to the whole nation
and to its modern needs and demands, that
devotion, I say, which made the rapid and
wonderful transformation of Japan possible.
The ideal of Bushidp, meanwhile, spread
from the old military class to a great part of
the nation at large. It is plainly not the only
Japanese ideal. And I am not disposed to
exaggerate what I hear of the part that the
old Japanese loyalty actually plays in deter
mining the present morality of the plain people
of that country. But there can be no doubt
that Bushido has been an enviable spiritual
possession of vast numbers of Japanese. /
It is indeed universally agreed that this ideal
of loyalty has been conceived in Japan as
requiring a certain impersonalism^ a certain
disregard of the central importance of the
ethical individual. And I myself do not be-i
lieve, in fact, that the Japanese have rightly

74

INDIVIDUALISM

conceived the true jvorth of the individual.
And yet, after all, is not this Japanese ideal of
loyalty a sort of counter-instance which all
the various opponents of loyalty, whose cases
have heretofore been stated, ought to consider ?
For Japanese loyalty has not been a mere
tool for the oppressors_to use^ Herein it has
indeed strongly differed from that blind and
pathetic loyalty of the ignorant Russian peas
ant, which my young friend had in mind
when he condemned loyalty. Japanese loy
alty has led, on the contrary, to a wonderful
and cordial solidarity of national spirit. _If_
it has discouraged strident self-assertion, it
has not suppressed individual judgment. For
the modern transformation of Japan has
surely depended upon a vast development of
personal ingenuity and plasticity, not only in
tellectual but moral. This loyalty has not:
made machines out of meiu It has given
rise to a wonderful development of individual
talent. Japanese loyalty, furthermore, if in
deed strongly opposed to the individualism
which knows its rights rather than its duties,

75

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

has expressed itself in an heroic vigor of life
which the most energetic amongst those who
love to assert themselves might well envy.
And meanwhile this loyalty, in some at least
of its representatives, has included, has used,
has elaborately trained an inner serenity of
individual self-control, a spiritual peace and
inner perfection which I find enviable,
and which many of our own nervous wan
derers upon the higher plane might find
indeed restful if they could attain to it.
There is, then, not so much opposition be
tween the good which the loyal may win,
and the various personal goods which our par
tisans of individualism emphasized. I do not
believe that the Japanese ought to be our
models. Our civilization has its own moral
problems, and must meet them in its own way.
But I am sure that our various partisans of
ethical individualism, when they conceive that
they are opponents of the spirit of loyalty,
ought to consider those aspects of Japanese
loyalty which most of us do indeed find en-
\ viable. This counter-instance serves to show

76

INDIVIDUALISM

that, at least in some measure, the various
personal goods which the different ethical
individualists seek, have been won, and so can
be won, by means of the spirit of loyalty.

IV

With this counter-instance once before you,
I may now go on to a closer analysis of the
rational claims of ethical individualism.

Whether he takes account of the physical
or of the natural world, every man inevitably
finds himself as apparently occupying the
centre of his own universe. The starry
heavens form to his eyes a sphere, and he him
self, so far as he can ever see, is at the centre
of that sphere. Yes, the entire and infinite
visible world, to be even more exact, seems to
each of you to have its centre about where the
bridge of your own nose chances to be. What
is very remote from us we all of us find it diffi
cult to regard as real in the same warm and
vital sense in which the world near to us is
real. It is for us all a little hard to see how

77

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

the people who live far from our own dwelling-
place, say, the Australians or the Siberians,
can really fail to observe how distant they are
from the place where, after all, it is from our
point of view most natural to have one s
abiding-place. And the people of alien races
must surely feel, if they share our so natural
insight regarding them, that they are indeed
a strange sort of folk.

This inevitable illusion of perspective is,
of course, responsible for what is called our
natural selfishness. But on the other hand,
this illusion is no mere illusion. It suggests,
even while it distorts, the true nature of things.
The real world has a genuine relation to the
various personalities that live in it. The
truth is diversified by its relation to these per
sonalities. Values do indeed alter with the
point of view. The world as interpreted by
me is a fact different from the world as inter
preted by you ; and these different interpreta
tions have all of them their basis in the truth
of things. So far as moral values are con
cerned, it is therefore indeed certain that no

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INDIVIDUALISM

ethical doctrine can be right which neglects
individuals, and which disregards, I will not
say their right, but their duty to centralize
their lives, and so their moral universe, about
their own purposes. As we seem to be at the
centre of the starry heavens, so each of us is
indeed at the centre of his own realm of duty.
No impersonal moral theory can be successful.
Individualism in ethics has therefore its
permanent and, as I believe, its absolute jus
tification in the nature of things. And the
first principle of a true individualism in ethics
is indeed that moral autonomy of any rational
person which I mentioned at the last time,
and which Kant so beautifully defended.
Only your own will, brought to a true knowl
edge of itself, can ever determine for you what
your duty is. And so far, then, I myself, in
defending loyalty as a good thing for the loyal,
am speaking as an ethical individualist. My
whole case depends upon this fact. And so,
in following my argument, you need not fear
that I want to set some impersonal sort of life
as an ideal over against the individualism of

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

the opponents of loyalty whose various cases I
have just been stating. I contend only that
their opposition to loyalty, their view that one s
individual purposes can be won otherwise than
by and through loyalty, is due merely to their
failure to comprehend what it is that the ethical
individual needs, and what it is that in all,
even of his blindest strivings, he is still seeking.
What I hold is, that he inevitably seeks his
own form of loyalty, his own cause, and his
opportunity to serve that cause, and that he
can actually and rationally find spiritual rest
and peace in nothing else. Let me indicate to
you my reasons for this view; and then, as
I hope, you will see that my opponents do not
at heart mean to oppose me. As the matter
stands, they merely oppose themselves, and
this through a mere misapprehension.

To my opponent, wherever he is, I therefore
say: Be an individual; seek your own indi
vidual good; seek that good thoroughly, un
swervingly, unsparingly, with all your heart
and soul. But I persist in asking : Where, in
heaven above and in earth beneath, have you

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INDIVIDUALISM

to look for this your highest good? Where
can you find it ?

The first answer to this question might very
naturally take the form of saying: "I seek,
as my highest individual good, my own happi
ness." But, as I pointed out to you in my
opening discussion, this answer only gives you
your problem back again, unsolved. Happi
ness involves the satisfaction of desires. Your
natural desires are countless and conflicting.
What satisfies one desire defeats another.
Until your desires are harmonized by means
of some definite plan of life, happiness is
therefore a mere accident. Now it comes and
now it flies, you know not why. And the
mere plan to be happy if you can is by itself
no plan. You therefore cannot adopt the
pursuit of happiness as your profession. The
calling that you adopt will in any case be some
thing that the social order in which you live
teaches you ; and all plans will in your mind be
practically secondary to your general plan to
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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

live in some sort of tolerable relation to your
social order. For you are indeed a social
being.

If, next, you simply say : "Well, then, I will
live as my social order requires me to live,"
again, as we have seen, you find yourself with
out any determinate way of expressing your
own individuality. For if the social order is
indeed not as chaotic in its activities as by
nature you yourself are, it is quite unable of
itself to do more than to make of you, in one
way or another, a link in its mechanism, or
a member of one of its numerous herds, in any
case a mere vehicle for carrying its various in
fluences. Against this fate, as an ethical indi
vidual, you justly revolt. If this chance social
existence furnishes to you your only plan of
life, you therefore live in a sad but altogether
too common wavering between blind submis
sion and incoherent rebellion. As Kant says
of the natural human being, your state so far
remains this, that you can neither endure your
fellow-man nor do without him. You do your
daily work perhaps, but you complain of your

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INDIVIDUALISM

employer. You earn your bread, but you
are bitter because of hard times, and because
of the social oppressions that beset you.
You are insufferably dreary when alone,
but are bored when in company. Your
neighbors determine your customs; but in
return for the art of life thus acquired, you
persistently criticise your neighbors for their
offences against custom. Imitation and jeal
ousy, slavish conventionality, on the one hand,
secret or open disorder, on the other, bicker
ings that inflame, and gayeties that do not
cheer these, along with many joys and sor
rows that come by accident, constitute upon
this level the chronicle of your life. It is
such a chronicle that the daily newspapers,
in the most of their less violently criminal re
ports, constantly rehearse to us, so far as they
are not taken up with reporting the really
greater social activities of mankind. Thus the
merely social animal escapes from the chaos
of his natural desires, only to sink to the
pettiness of a hewer of wood and drawer of
water for his lord, the social order. He may

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

become fairly happy for a longer or shorter
time ; but that is so far mere chance. He may
even think himself fairly contented, but that is,
upon this level, mere callousness.

But if, indeed, you are a genuine individual
ist, you cannot accept this fate. If you are an
effective individualist, you do not remain a
prey to that fate. You demand your libera
tion. You require your birthright of the social
order which has brought your individuality into
being. You seek the salvation of yourself
from this intolerable bondage. Now, I have
already counselled you to seek such liberty
in the form of loyalty ; that is, of a willing and
whole-souled devotion to a fascinating social
cause. But perhaps this does not yet seem to
you the solution. And therefore you may
next turn to a very familiar form of individual
ism. You may say, "Well, then, my ideal shall
be Power. I seek to be master of my fate."

That the highest good for the individual is
to be defined in terms of Power, this, I say,
is a well-known doctrine. It is very old. It is
in each generation renewed, for the young men

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INDIVIDUALISM

define it ever afresh. In our time it has been
emphasized by Nietzsche s view that the central
principle of ethical individuality is Der Wille
zur Macht the will to be mighty.

If this is now your doctrine, the power that
you seek will, of course, not be mere brute
force. Those have ill interpreted Nietzsche,
that heavily burdened invalid, doomed to
solitude by his sensitiveness, and yet longing
amidst his sufferings for an influence over his
fellow-men of which he never became conscious
before the end came to him, those have ill
interpreted him who have found in his passion
ate aphorisms only a glorification of elemental
selfishness. No, --power for Nietzsche, as
for all ethical individualists of serious signifi
cance, is power idealized through its social
efficacy, and conceived in terms of some more
or less vague dream of a completely perfected
and ideal, but certainly social, individual man.
And Nietzsche s particular dream of power
has all the pathos of the hopeless invalid s
longing for escape from his disease. The
tragedy of his personal life was one only of the

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

countless tragedies to which the seekers after
power have fallen victims.

Well, if it is power that you seek, your ideal
may not be expressed as Nietzsche expressed
his, but in any case you will be seeking some
socially idealized type of power. Warriors,
statesmen, artists, will be before your mind
as examples of what power, if attained, would
be. In your sphere you will be seeking to
control social conditions, and to centre them
about your individual interests. Our present
question is : Can you hope to attain the highest
individual good by such a quest for power as
this ?

When we remember that the principal theme
of heroic tragedy in all ages has been the fate
of the seekers after individual power, and that
one of the favorite topics of comedy, from
the beginning of comedy until to-day, has been
the absurdity of the quest of these very lovers
of power, our question begins to suggest its
own answer. Regarding few topics have the
sages, the poets, and the cynical critics of
mankind more agreed than regarding the sig-

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INDIVIDUALISM

nificance of the search for power, whenever
power is sought otherwise than as a mere means
to some more ideal goal. Let us then merely
recall the well-known verdict that tragedy and
comedy, and the wisdom of the ages, have
passed upon the lust of power.

The objections to defining your individual
good in terms merely of power are threefold.
First, the attainment of power is a matter of
fortune. Set your heart upon power, make it
your central good in life, and you have staked
the worth of your moral individuality upon a
mere venture. In the end old age and death
will at best make a mockery of whatever purely
individual powers your life as a human being
can possess for yourself alone. While life
lasts, the attainment of power is at best but a
little less uncertain than the attainment of a
purely private individual happiness. This is
the first objection to power as the highest indi
vidual good. It is an objection as sound as it
is old ; and in this objection the poets and the
sages are at one; and the cynics join in the
verdict.

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

Secondly, the lust for power is insatiable.
To say, I seek merely power, not as a means to
an end, but as my chief good, is to say that, for
my own sake alone, I condemn myself to a
laborious quest that is certain, from my own
point of view and however fortune favors me,
to give me a constantly increasing sense that I
have not found what I need. Thus, then, I
condemn myself to an endless disappointment.
This objection is also well known ; and it is
easily illustrated. After fortune had long
seemed to be actually unable to thwart Na
poleon, he went on to destroy himself, merely
because his lust for power grew with what it
fed upon, until the fatal Russian campaign
became inevitable.

Thirdly, in the often quoted words of Spi
noza, "The power of man is infinitely surpassed
by the power of external things;" and hence
the seeker after merely individual power has
undertaken a battle with the essentially irre
sistible forces of the whole universe. There
fore, to adapt other words of Spinoza, when
such a seeker after power "ceases to suffer, he

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INDIVIDUALISM

ceases also to be." The larger one s powers,
the more are the places in which he comes in
contact with the world that he would con
quer, and the more are the ways in which he
feels its force. It is with the seeker after indi
vidual power as it has lately been with some of
our greater corporations. The vaster the capi
tal of these corporations, and the more widely
spread the interests that they control, the
more numerous are their enemies, the harder
the legislative enactments that they have to
fear, the greater their fines if they are convicted
of misdoing. Power means increasing oppor
tunities for conflict. Hence the mere seeker
for power not only, by the accidents of fortune,
may meet his downfall, but also, himself,
actively pursues his own destruction.

Whoever pursues power, and only power,
wars therefore with unconquerable fate. But
you may retort: "Are the loyal also not sub
ject to fortune, like others?" And, in reply,
I call at once attention to the fact that pre
cisely such fate is what the loyal also unhesi
tatingly face; but they meet it in a totally

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

different spirit. They, too, are indeed subject
to fortune ; their loyalty, also, is an insatiable
passion to serve their cause; they also know
what it is to meet with tasks that are too vast
for mortals to accomplish. Only their very
loyalty, since it is a willing surrender of the self
to the cause, is no hopeless warfare with this
fate, but is a joyous acceptance in advance of the
inevitable destiny of every individual human
being. In such matters, as you well know,
"the readiness is all." Loyalty discounts
death, for it is from the start a readiness to die
for the cause. It defies fortune ; for it says :
" Lo, have I not surrendered my all ? Did I
ever assert that just I must be fortunate?"
Since it views life as service of the cause, it is
content with an endless quest. Since nothing
is too vast to undertake for the cause, loyalty
regards the greatness of its tasks as mere
opportunity. But the lust of power, on the
contrary, has staked its value not upon the
giving up of self-will, but upon the attainment
of private possessions, upon the winning of
the hopeless fight of the individual with his

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INDIVIDUALISM

private fate. Hence, in a world of wandering
and of private disasters and unsettlement, the
loyal indeed are always at home. For how
ever they may wander or lose, they view their
cause as fixed and as worthy. To serve the
cause is an honor; and this honor they have
in their own possession. But in this same world
the seekers for power are never at home. If
they have conquered Western Europe, power
lies still hidden in the Far East, and they wan
der into the snows of a Russian winter in pur
suit of that ghost of real life which always
beckons to them from the dark world beyond.
Napoleon s loyal soldiers won, indeed, their
goal when they died in his service. But he
lost. They were more fortunate than was
their leader. They had their will, and then
slept. He lived on for a while, and failed.

Such considerations may suffice to show
wherein consists the blindness of those who in
our day seem to themselves to have more rights
than duties. This homily of mine about the
vanity of the lust for power is, of course, a very
old story. You may think these remarks

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

but wearisome moral platitudes. But we all
have to learn this sort of lesson sometime
afresh, and for ourselves. And if the story of
the fate of the lust for power is old, it is none
the less true. And it is a story that we in
America seem to need to have told to us anew
to-day. Any financial crisis with its tragedies
can serve by way of illustration.

But perhaps this is not the form of indi
vidualism which is asserted by the ethical
individualist whom I am now addressing.
Perhaps you say : " It is not mere power that I
want. I demand moral autonomy, personal
independence of judgment. I want to call
my soul my own. The highest good is an
active self-possession." Well, in this case I
wholly agree with your demand, precisely in
so far as you make that demand positive. I
only undertake to supplement your own state
ment of your demand, and to oppose your
denial of the supreme value of loyalty. For
what end, I insist, is your moral independence
good ? Do you find anything finally impor
tant in the mere fact that you are unlike any-

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INDIVIDUALISM

body else, or that you think good what another
man condemns ? What worth could you find
in an independence that should merely isolate
you, that should leave you but a queer creature,
whose views are shared by nobody ? No, -
you are still a social being. What you really
mean is, that you want to be heard and re
spected as regards your choice of your own
cause. What you actually intend is, that no
body else shall determine, apart from this your
own choice, the special loyalty that shall be
yours.

Now, I, who have defined loyalty as the will
ing devotion of a self to a cause, am far from
demanding from you any unwilling devotion
to any cause. You are autonomous, of course.
You can even cut loose from all loyalty if you
will. I only plead that, if you do so, if you
wholly decline to devote yourself to any cause
whatever, your assertion of moral indepen
dence will remain but an empty proclaiming of
a moral sovereignty over your life, without
any definite life over which to be sovereign.
For the only definite life that you can live will

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

be a social life. This social life may indeed
be one of enmity to society. But in that case
your social order will crush you, and then your
moral independence will die without any of the
comfort of the loyal man s last glimpse of
the banner for which he sheds his blood. For
the loyal man s cause survives him. Your
independence will die with you, and while it
lives, nobody else will find its life worth insur
ing. Your last word will then be simply the
empty phrase: "Lo, I asserted myself." But
in the supposed case of your enmity to society,
you will never know what it was that you thus
asserted when you asserted yourself. For a
man s self has no contents, no plans, no pur
poses, except those which are, in one way or
another, defined for him by his social relations.
Or, again, your life may indeed be one of social
conformity, of merely conventional morality.
But such a life you, as individualist, have
learned to despise, --I think justly. Your
only recourse, then, is to assert your autonomy
by choosing a cause, and by loyally living, and,
when need be, dying for that cause. Then you

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INDIVIDUALISM

will not only assert yourself by your choice of
a cause, but express yourself articulately by
your service. The only way to be practically
autonomous is to be freely loyal.

Such considerations serve to indicate my
answer to those individualists who insist upon
moral independence. My young Russian and
my friend, the teacher, were individualists of
this type. My answer to them both, as you see,
is that the only coherent moral independence
which you can define is one that has to find its
expression in a loyal life. There is endless
room, as we shall hereafter see, for a rational
autonomy in your choice of your cause.

But you may still insist that one other form
of individualism remains open to you. You
may say: "I seek spirituality, serenity, an
inward peace, which the world cannot give or
take away. Therefore my highest good lies
not in loyalty, but in this interior perfection."
But once more I answer you with the whole
verdict of human experience regarding the
true nature of spiritual self-possession. You
seek serenity. Yes, but you do not want your

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

serenity to mean mere apathy. You seek
peace, but you do not want dreamless sleep,
nor yet the repose of a swoon. The stones
seem to remain serene when you by chance
stumble over them ; some tropical islanders
slumber peacefully in their huts when there is
no work pressing. But the types of serenity
that are for you in question are not of such
sort. You are an ethical individualist. Your
repose must therefore be the only repose pos
sible to a being with a conscious and a vital
will of his own. It must be the repose of ac
tivity; the assurance of one who lives ener
getically, even because he lives in the spirit.
But in what spirit shall you live ? Are you
not a man ? Can you live with an active will
of your own without living amongst your
brethren? Seek, then, serenity, but let it be
the serenity of the devotedly and socially active
being. Otherwise your spiritual peace is a
mere feeling of repose, and, as such, contents
at its best but one side of your nature, namely,
the merely sensuous side. The massive sen
sation that all things are somehow well is not

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INDIVIDUALISM

the highest good of an active being. Even one
of the most typical of mystics, Meister Eckhart,
once stated his case, regarding a true spiritual
life, thus : That a man should have a life of
rest and peace in God is good ; that he should
bear a painful life with patience is better;
but that he should find his rest even in his pain
ful life, that is best of all." Now, this last
state, the finding of one s rest and spiritual
fulfilment even in one s very life of toil itself, -
this state is precisely the state of the loyal,
in so far as their loyalty gets full control of
their emotional nature. I grant you that not
all the loyal are possessed of this serenity;
but that is because of their defects of nature
or of training. Their loyalty would be more
effective, indeed, if it were colored throughout
by the serenity that you pursue. But your own
peace of spirit will be meaningless unless it is
the peace of one who is willingly devoted to his
cause. The loving," says Bayard Taylor, in
his lyric of Sebastopol, "the loving are the dar
ing." And I say: The truly serene of spirit
are to be found at their best amongst the loyal.

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

In view of such considerations, when I listen
to our modern ethical individualists, to our
poets, dramatists, essayists who glorify per
sonal initiative to our Walt Whitman, to
Ibsen, and, above all, when I listen to Nietzsche,
I confess that these men move me for a time,
but that erelong I begin to listen with impa
tience. Of course, I then say, be indeed auton
omous. Be an individual. But for Heaven s
sake, set about the task. Do not forever whet
the sword of your resolve. Begin the battle
of real individuality. Why these endless pre
liminary gesticulations? "Leave off thy
grimaces," and begin. There is only one way
to be an ethical individual. That is to choose
your cause, and then to serve it, as the Samurai
his feudal chief, as the ideal knight of romantic
story his lady, in the spirit of all the loyal.

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Ill

LOYALTY TO LOYALTY

LECTURE III

LOYALTY TO LOYALTY

THE two foregoing lectures have been de
voted to defending the thesis that loyalty
is, for the loyal individual himself, a supreme
good, whatever be, for the world in general,
the worth of his cause. We are next to con
sider what are the causes which are worthy of
loyalty.

I

But before I go on to this new stage of our
discussion, I want, by way of summary of all
that has preceded, to get before your minds as
clear an image as I can of some representative
instance of loyalty. The personal dignity and
worth of a loyal character can best be appre
ciated by means of illustrations. And I con
fess that those illustrations of loyalty which my
earlier lectures used must have aroused some
associations which I do not want, as I go on to

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

my further argument, to leave too prominent
in your minds. I chose those instances be
cause they were familiar. Perhaps they are
too familiar. I have mentioned the patriot
aflame with the war-spirit, the knight of ro
mance, and the Japanese Samurai. But these
examples may have too much emphasized the
common but false impression that loyalty
necessarily has to do with the martial virtues
and with the martial vices. I have also used
the instance of the loyal captain standing by
his sinking ship. But this case suggests that
the loyal have their duties assigned to them by
some established and customary routine of the
service to which they belong. And that, again,
is an association that I do not want you to
make too prominent. Loyalty is perfectly
consistent with originality. The loyal man
. may -often have to show his loyalty by some act
which no mere routine predetermines. He may
have to be as inventive of his duties as he is
faithful to them.

Now, I myself have for years used in my own
classes, as an illustration of the personal w r orth

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LOYALTY TO LOYALTY

and beauty of loyalty, an incident of English
history, which has often been cited as a
precedent in discussions of the constitutional
privileges of the House of Commons, but which,
as I think, has not been sufficiently noticed by
moralists. Let me set that incident now be
fore your imagination. Thus, I say, do the
loyal bear themselves : In January, 1642, just
before the outbreak of hostilities between
King Charles I and the Commons, the King
resolved to arrest certain leaders of the oppo
sition party in Parliament. He accordingly
sent his herald to the House to demand the
surrender of these members into his custody.
The Speaker of the House in reply solemnly
appealed to the ancient privileges of the House,
which gave to that body jurisdiction over its
own members, and which forbade their arrest
without its consent. The conflict between the
privileges of the House and the royal preroga
tive was herewith definitely initiated. The
King resolved by a show of force to assert at
once his authority ; and, on the day following
that upon which the demand sent through his

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

herald had been refused, he went in person,
accompanied by soldiers, to the House. Then,
having placed his guards at the doors, he en
tered, went up to the Speaker, and, naming the
members whom he desired to arrest, demanded,
"Mr. Speaker, do you espy these persons in
the House?"

You will observe that the moment was an
unique one in English history. Custom, prece
dent, convention, obviously were inadequate
to define the Speaker s duty in this most criti
cal instance. How, then, could he most ad
mirably express himself? How best preserve
his genuine personal dignity ? What response
would secure to the Speaker his own highest
good ? Think of the matter merely as one of
the Speaker s individual worth and reputation.
By what act could he do himself most honor ?

In fact, as the well-known report, entered
in the Journal of the House, states, the Speaker
at once fell on his knee before the King and
said: :< Your Majesty, I am the Speaker of
this House, and, being such, I have neither
eyes to see nor tongue to speak save as this

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LOYALTY TO LOYALTY

House shall command; and I humbly beg
your Majesty s pardon if this is the only an
swer that I can give to your Majesty."

Now, I ask you not, at this point, to consider
the Speaker s reply to the King as a deed
having historical importance, or in fact as
having value for anybody but himself. I want
you to view the act merely as an instance of
a supremely worthy personal attitude. The
beautiful union of formal humility (when the
Speaker fell on his knee before the King)
with unconquerable self-assertion (when the
reply rang with so clear a note of lawful de
fiance) ; the willing and complete identifica
tion of his whole self with his cause (when the
Speaker declared that he had no eye or tongue
except as his office gave them to him), these
are characteristics typical of a loyal attitude.
The Speaker s words were at once ingenious
and obvious. They were in line with the an
cient custom of the realm. They were also
creative of a new precedent. He had to be
inventive to utter them ; but once uttered, they
seem almost commonplace in their plain truth.

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

The King might be offended at the refusal;
but he could not fail to note that, for the mo
ment, he had met with a personal dignity
greater than kingship, the dignity that any
loyal man, great or humble, possesses whenever
he speaks and acts in the service of his cause.
Well --here is an image of loyalty. Thus,
I say, whatever their cause, the loyal express
themselves. When any one asks me what the
worthiest personal bearing, the most dignified
and internally complete expression of an indi
vidual is, I can therefore only reply: Such a
bearing, such an expression of yourself as the
Speaker adopted. Have, then, your cause,
chosen by you just as the Speaker had chosen
to accept his office from the House. Let this
cause so possess you that, even in the most
thrilling crisis of your practical service of that
cause, you can say with the Speaker: "I am
the servant of this cause, its reasonable, its
willing, its devoted instrument, and, being
such, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to
speak save as this cause shall command."
Let this be your bearing, and this your deed.

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LOYALTY TO LOYALTY

Then, indeed, you know what you live for.
And you have won the attitude which consti
tutes genuine personal dignity. What an indi
vidual in his practical bearing can be, you
now are. And herein, as I have said, lies for
you a supreme personal good.

II

With this image of the loyal self before us,
let us now return to the main thread of our
discourse. We have deliberately declined, so
far, to consider what the causes are to which
men ought to be loyal. To turn to this task is
the next step in our philosophy of loyalty.

Your first impression may well be that the
task in question is endlessly complex. In our
opening lecture we defined indeed some gen
eral characteristics which a cause must possess
in order to be a fitting object of loyalty. A
cause, we said, is a possible object of loyalty
only in case it is such as to join many persons
into the unity of a single life. Such a cause, we
said, must therefore be at once personal, and,
for one who defines personality from a purely

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

human point of view, superpersonal. Our ini
tial illustrations of possible causes were, first,
a friendship which unites several friends into
some unity of friendly life ; secondly, a family,
whose unity binds its members lives together ;
and, thirdly, the state, in so far as it is no mere
collection of separate citizens, but such an unity
as that to which the devoted patriot is loyal.
As we saw, such illustrations could be vastly
extended. All stable social relations may giye
rise to causes that may call forth loyalty.

Now, it is obvious that nobody can be equally
and directly loyal to all of the countless actual
social causes that exist. It is obvious also
that many causes which conform to our general
definition of a possible cause may appear to any
given person to be hateful and evil causes, to
which he is justly opposed. A robber band,
a family engaged in a murderous feud, a pirate
crew, a savage tribe, a Highland robber clan
of the old days these might constitute
causes to which somebody has been, or is, pro
foundly loyal. Men have loved such causes
devotedly, have served them for a lifetime.

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LOYALTY TO LOYALTY

Yet most of us would easily agree in thinking
such causes unworthy of anybody s loyalty.
Moreover, different loyalties may obviously
stand in mutual conflict, whenever their causes
are opposed. Family feuds are embittered by
the very strength of the loyalty of both sides.
My country, if I am the patriot inflamed by the
war-spirit, seems an absolutely worthy cause;
but my enemy s country usually seems hateful
to me just because of my own loyalty; and
therefore even my individual enemy may be
hated because of the supposed baseness of his
cause. War-songs call the individual enemy
evil names just because he possesses the very
personal qualities that, in our own loyal fellow-
countrymen, we most admire. "No refuge
could save the hireling and slave." Our
enemy, as you see, is a slave, because he serves
his cause so obediently. Yet just such service
we call, in our own country s heroes, the wor
thiest devotion.

Meanwhile, in the foregoing account of
loyalty as a spiritual good to the loyal man, we
have insisted that true loyalty, being a willing

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

devotion of the self to its cause, involves some
element of autonomous choice. Tradition
has usually held that a man ought to be loyal
to just that cause which his social station deter
mines for him. Common sense generally says,
that if you were born in your country, and still
live there, you ought to be loyal to that country,
and to that country only, hating the enemies
across the border whenever a declaration of
war requires you to hate them. But we have
declared that true loyalty includes some ele
ment of free choice. Hence our own account
seems still further to have complicated the
theory of loyalty. For in answering in our
last lecture the ethical individualists who ob
jected to loyalty, we have ourselves deliberately
given to loyalty an individualistic coloring.
And if our view be right, and if tradition be
wrong, so much the more difficult appears to
be the task of defining wherein consists that
which makes a cause worthy of loyalty for a
given man, since tradition alone is for us an
insufficient guide.

To sum up, then, our apparent difficulties,
no

LOYALTY TO LOYALTY

they are these : Loyalty is a good for the loyal
man; but it may be mischievous for those
whom his cause assails. Conflicting loyalties
may mean general social disturbances ; and
the fact that loyalty is good for the loyal does
not of itself decide whose cause is right when
various causes stand opposed to one another.
And if, in accordance with our own argument
in the foregoing lecture, we declare that the
best form of loyalty, for the loyal individual,
is the one that he freely chooses for himself,
so much the greater seems to be the complica
tion of the moral world, and so much the more
numerous become the chances that the loyal
ties of various people will conflict with one
another.

Ill

In order to overcome such difficulties, now
that they have arisen in our way, and in order
to discover a principle whereby one may be
guided in choosing a right object for his loyalty,
we must steadfastly bear in mind that, when
we declared loyalty to be a supreme good for

in

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

the loyal man himself, we were not speaking
of a good that can come to a few men only
to heroes or to saints of an especially exalted
mental type. As we expressly said, the
mightiest and the humblest members of any
social order can be morally equal in the ex
emplification of loyalty. Whenever I myself
begin to look about my own community to
single out those people whom I know to be,
in the sense of our definition, especially loyal
to their various causes, I always find, amongst
the most exemplary cases of loyalty, a few in
deed of the most prominent members of the
community, whom your minds and mine must
at once single out because their public services
and their willing sacrifices have made their
loyalty to their chosen causes a matter of com
mon report and of easy observation. But
my own mind also chooses some of the plain
est and obscurest of the people whom I chance
to know, the most straightforward and simple-
minded of folk, whose loyalty is even all the
more sure to me because I can certainly
affirm that they, at least, cannot be making

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LOYALTY TO LOYALTY

any mere display of loyalty in order that they
should be seen of men. Nobody knows of
their loyalty except those who are in more or
less direct touch with them ; and these usually
appreciate this loyalty too little. You all of
you similarly know plain and wholly obscure
men and women, of whom the world has never
heard, and is not worthy, but who have pos
sessed and who have proved in the presence of
you who have chanced to observe them, a loyalty
to their chosen causes which was not indeed
expressed in martial deeds, but which was quite
as genuine a loyalty as that of a Samurai, or
as that of Arnold von Winkelried when he
rushed upon the Austrian spears. As for the
ordinary expressions of loyalty, not at critical
moments and in the heroic instants that come
to the plainest lives, but in daily business, we
are all aware how the letter carrier and the
housemaid may live, and often do live, when
they choose, as complete a daily life of steadfast
loyalty as could any knight or king. Some of
us certainly know precisely such truly great
personal embodiments of loyalty in those who
i 113

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

are, in the world s ill-judging eyes, the little
ones of the community.

Now these facts, I insist, show that loyalty
is in any case no aristocratic gift of the few.
It is, indeed, too rare a possession to-day in
our own American social order; but that
defect is due to the state of our present moral
education. We as a nation, I fear, have been
forgetting loyalty. We have been neglecting to
cultivate it in our social order. We have been
making light of it. We have not been train
ing ourselves for it. Hence we, indeed, often
sadly miss it in our social environment. But
all sound human beings are made for it and
can learn to possess it and to profit by it.
And it is an essentially accessible and prac
tical virtue for everybody.

This being true, let us next note that all the
complications which we just reported are ob
viously due, in the main, to the fact that, as
loyal men at present are, their various causes,
and so their various loyalties, are viewed by
them as standing in mutual, sometimes in
deadly conflict. In general, as is plain if

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LOYALTY TO LOYALTY

somebody s loyalty to a given cause, as for
instance to a family, or to a state, so expresses
itself as to involve a feud with a neighbor s
family, or a warlike assault upon a foreign
state, the result is obviously an evil; and at
least part of the reason why it is an evil is
that, by reason of the feud or the war, a cer
tain good, namely, the enemy s loyalty, to
gether with the enemy s opportunity to be
loyal, is assailed, is thwarted, is endangered,
is, perhaps, altogether destroyed. If the loy
alty of A is a good for him, and if the loyalty
of B is a good for him, then a feud between
A and B, founded upon a mutual conflict
between the causes that they serve, obviously
involves this evil, namely, that each of the
combatants assails, and perhaps may alto
gether destroy, precisely what we have seen
to be the best spiritual possession of the
other, namely, his chance to have a cause
and to be loyal to a cause. The militant
loyalty, indeed, also assails, in such a case,
the enemy s physical comfort and well-being,
his property, his life; and herein, of course,

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

militant loyalty does evil to the enemy. But
if each man s having and serving a cause is
his best good, the worst of the evils of a feud
is the resulting attack, not upon the enemy s
comfort or his health or his property or his
life, but upon the most precious of his posses
sions, his loyalty itself.

If loyalty is a supreme good, the mutually
destructive conflict of loyalties is in general a
supreme evil. If loyalty is a good for all
sorts and conditions of men, the war of man
against man has been especially mischievous,
not so much because it has hurt, maimed, im
poverished, or slain men, as because it has
so often robbed the defeated of their causes,
of their opportunities to be loyal, and some
times of their very spirit of loyalty.

If, then, we look over the field of human
life to see where good and evil have most
clustered, we see that the best in human life
is its loyalty ; while the worst is whatever has
tended to make loyalty impossible, or to
destroy it when present, or to rob it of its own
while it still survives. And of all things that

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LOYALTY TO LOYALTY

thus have warred with loyalty, the bitterest
woe of humanity has been that so often it is
the loyal themselves who have thus blindly
and eagerly gone about to wound and to slay
the loyalty of their brethren. The spirit of
loyalty has been misused to make men commit
sin against this very spirit, holy as it is. For
such a sin is precisely what any wanton con
flict of loyalties means. Where such a con
flict occurs, the best, namely, loyalty, is
used as an instrument in order to compass the
worst, namely, the destruction of loyalty.

It is true, then, that some causes are good,
while some are evil. But the test of good and
evil in the causes to which men are loyal is
now definable in terms which we can greatly
simplify in view of the foregoing considera
tions.

If, namely, I find a cause, and this cause
fascinates me, and I give myself over to its
service, I in so far attain what, for me, if my
loyalty is complete, is a supreme good. But
my cause, by our own definition, is a social
cause, which binds many into the unity of

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

one service. My cause, therefore, gives me,
of necessity, fellow-servants, who with me
share this loyalty, and to whom this loyalty, if
complete, is also a supreme good. So far,
then, in being loyal myself, I not only get but
give good; for I help to sustain, in each of
my fellow-servants, his own loyalty, and so I
help him to secure his own supreme good.
In so far, then, my loyalty to my cause is also
a loyalty to my fellows loyalty. But now
suppose that my cause, like the family in a
feud, or like the pirate ship, or like the aggres
sively warlike nation, lives by the destruction
of the loyalty of other families, or of its own
community, or of other communities. Then,
indeed, I get a good for myself and for my
fellow-servants by our common loyalty; but
I war against this very spirit of loyalty as it
appears in our opponent s loyalty to his own
cause.

And so, a cause is good, not only for me,
but for mankind, in so far as it is essentially
a loyalty to loyalty, that is, is an aid and a
furtherance of loyalty in my fellows. It is an

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LOYALTY TO LOYALTY

evil cause in so far as, despite the loyalty
that it arouses in me, it is destructive of loy
alty in the world of my fellows. My cause
is, indeed, always such as to involve some
loyalty to loyalty, because, if I am loyal to
any cause at all, I have fellow-servants whose
loyalty mine supports. But in so far as my
cause is a predatory cause, which lives by
overthrowing the loyalties of others, it is an
evil cause, because it involves disloyalty to
the very cause of loyalty itself.

IV

In view of these considerations, we are
now able still further to simplify our problem
by laying stress upon one more of those very
features which seemed, but a moment since, to
complicate the matter so hopelessly. Loy
alty, as we have defined it, is the willing de
votion of a self to a cause. In answering the
ethical individualists, we have insisted that
all of the higher types of loyalty involve auton
omous choice. The cause that is to appeal
to me at all must indeed have some elemental

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

fascination for me. It must stir me, arouse
me, please me, and in the end possess me.
Moreover, it must, indeed, be set before me
by my social order as a possible, a practically
significant, a living cause, which binds many
selves in the unity of one life. But, never
theless, if I am really awake to the signifi
cance of my own moral choices, I must be in
the position of accepting this cause, as the
Speaker of the House, in the incident that I
have narrated, had freely accepted his Speak-
ership. My cause cannot be merely forced
upon me. It is I who make it my own. It is
I who willingly say: "I have no eyes to see
nor tongue to speak save as this cause shall
command." However much the cause may
seem to be assigned to me by my social sta
tion, I must cooperate in the choice of the
cause, before the act of loyalty is complete.

Since this is the case, since my loyalty never
is my mere fate, but is always also my choice,
I can of course determine my loyalty, at least
to some extent, by the consideration of the
actual good and ill which my proposed cause

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LOYALTY TO LOYALTY

does to mankind. And since I now have the
main criterion of the good and ill of causes
before me, I can define a principle of choice
which may so guide me that my loyalty shall
become a good, not merely to myself, but to
mankind.

This principle is now obvious. I may
state it thus : In so far as it lies in your power,
so choose your cause and so serve it, that, by
reason of your choice and of your service,
there shall be more loyalty in the world rather
than less. And, in fact, so choose and
so serve your individual cause as to secure
thereby the greatest possible increase of loy
alty amongst men. More briefly: In choos
ing and in serving the cause to which you are
to be loyal, be, in any case, loyal to loyalty.

This precept, I say, will express how one
should guide his choice of a cause, in so far as
he considers not merely his own supreme
good, but that of mankind. That such auton
omous choice is possible, tends, as we now
see, not to complicate, but to simplify our moral
situation. For if you regard men s loyalty

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

as their fate, if you think that a man must be
loyal simply to the cause which tradition sets
before him, without any power to direct his
own moral attention, then indeed the conflict
of loyalties seems an insoluble problem; so
that, if men find themselves loyally involved
in feuds, there is no way out. But if, indeed,
choice plays a part, a genuine even if
limited part, in directing the individual s
choice of the cause to which he is to be loyal,
then indeed this choice may be so directed
that loyalty to the universal loyalty of all
mankind shall be furthered by the actual
choices which each enlightened loyal person
makes when he selects his cause.

At the close of our first discussion we sup
posed the question to be asked, Where, in all
our complex and distracted modern world, in
which at present cause wars with cause, shall
we find a cause that is certainly worthy of
our loyalty? This question, at this very
moment, has received in our discussion an

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LOYALTY TO LOYALTY

answer which you may feel to be so far pro
visional, --perhaps unpractical, --but which
you ought to regard as, at least in principle,
somewhat simple and true to human nature.
Loyalty is a good, a supreme good. If I my
self could but find a worthy cause, and serve it
as the Speaker served the House, having nei
ther eyes to see nor tongue to speak save as
that cause should command, then my highest
human good, in so far as I am indeed an active
being, would be mine. But this very good of
loyalty is no peculiar privilege of mine; nor
is it good only for me. It is an universally
human good. For it is simply the finding of
a harmony of the self and the world, such
a harmony as alone can content any human
being.

In these lectures I do not found my ar
gument upon some remote ideal. I found
my case upon taking our poor passionate
human nature just as we find it. This "eager
anxious being" of ours, as Gray calls it, is
a being that we can find only in social ties,
and that we, nevertheless, can never fulfil

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

without a vigorous self-assertion. We are by
nature proud, untamed, restless, insatiable in
our private self-will. We are also imitative,
plastic, and in bitter need of ties. We pro
foundly want both to rule and to be ruled.
We must be each of us at the centre of his
own active world, and yet each of us longs
to be in harmony with the very outermost
heavens that encompass, with the lofty order
liness of their movements, all our restless
doings. The stars fascinate us, and yet we
also want to keep our own feet upon our solid
human earth. Our fellows, meanwhile, over
whelm us with the might of their customs,
and we in turn are inflamed with the natu
rally unquenchable longing that they should
somehow listen to the cries of our every in
dividual desire.

Now this divided being of ours demands
reconciliation with itself ; it is one long strug
gle for unity. Its inner and outer realms are
naturally at war. Yet it wills both realms.
It wants them to become one. Such unity,
however, only loyalty furnishes to us, --loy-

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LOYALTY TO LOYALTY

ally, which finds the inner self intensified and
exalted even by the very act of outward look
ing and of upward looking, of service and
obedience, loyalty, which knows its eyes and
its tongue to be never so much and so proudly
its own as when it earnestly insists that it can
neither see nor speak except as the cause de
mands, loyalty, which is most full of life at the
instant when it is most ready to become weary,
or even to perish in the act of devotion to its
own. Such loyalty unites private passion and
outward conformity in one life. This is the
very essence of loyalty. Now loyalty has these
characters in any man who is loyal. Its
emotions vary, indeed, endlessly with the
temperaments of its adherents; but to them
all it brings the active peace of that rest in a
painful life, that rest such as we found the
mystic, Meister Eckhart, fully ready to prize.
Loyalty, then, is a good for all men. And
it is in any man just as much a true good as
my loyalty could be in me. And so, then, if
indeed I seek a cause, a worthy cause,
what cause could be more worthy than the

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYA-LTY

cause of loyalty to loyalty; that is, the
cause of making loyalty prosper amongst
men ? If I could serve that cause in a sus
tained and effective life, if some practical
work for the furtherance of universal human
loyalty could become to me what the House
was to the Speaker, then indeed my own life-
task would be found; and I could then be
assured at every instant of the worth of my
cause by virtue of the very good that I per
sonally found in its service.

Here would be for me not only an unity of
inner and outer, but an unity with the unity of
all human life. What I sought for myself I
should then be explicitly seeking for my whole
world. All men would be my fellow-servants
of my cause. In principle I should be opposed
to no man s loyalty. I should be opposed only
to men s blindness in their loyalty, I should
contend only against that tragic disloyalty to
loyalty which the feuds of humanity now
exemplify. I should preach to all others, I
should strive to practise myself, that active
mutual furtherance of universal loyalty which

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LOYALTY TO LOYALTY

is what humanity obviously most needs, if
indeed loyalty, just as the willing devotion of
a self to a cause, is a supreme good.

And since all who are human are as capable
of loyalty as they are of reason, since the
plainest and the humblest can be as true-
hearted as the great, I should nowhere miss
the human material for my task. I should
know, meanwhile, that if indeed loyalty, unlike
the "mercy" of Portia s speech, is not always
mightiest in the mightiest, it certainly, like
mercy, becomes the throned monarch better
than his crown. So that I should be sure of
this good of loyalty as something worthy to
be carried, so far as I could carry it, to every
body, lofty or humble.

Thus surely it would be humane and reason
able for me to define my cause to myself,
if only I could be assured that there is indeed
some practical way of making loyalty to
loyalty the actual cause of my life. Our
question therefore becomes this : Is there a
practical way of serving the universal human
cause of loyalty to loyalty? And if there is

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

such a way, what is it ? Can we see how per
sonally so to act that we bring loyalty on
earth to a fuller fruition, to a wider range of
efficacy, to a more effective sovereignty over
the lives of men ? If so, then indeed we can
see how to work for the cause of the genuine
kingdom of heaven.

VI

Yet I fear that as you have listened to this
sketch of a possible and reasonable cause,
such as could be a proper object of our loy
alty, you will all the while have objected:
This may be a definition of a possible cause,
but it is an unpractical definition. For what
is there that one can do to further the loyalty
of mankind in general ? Humanitarian efforts
are an old story. They constantly are limited
in their effectiveness both by the narrowness
of our powers, and by the complexity of the
human nature which we try to improve. And
if any lesson of philanthropy is well known,
it is this, that whoever tries simply to help
mankind as a whole, loses his labor, so long as.

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LOYALTY TO LOYALTY

he does not first undertake to help those near
est to him. Loyalty to the cause of universal
loyalty -- how, then, shall it constitute any
practical working scheme of life ?

I answer at once that the individual man,
with his limited powers, can indeed serve the
cause of universal loyalty only by limiting his
undertakings to some decidedly definite per
sonal range. He must have his own special
and personal cause. But this cause of his
can indeed be chosen and determined so as to
constitute a deliberate effort to further uni
versal loyalty. When I begin to show you
how this may be, I shall at once pass from
what may have seemed to you a very unprac
tical scheme of life, to a realm of familiar
and commonplace virtuous activities. The
only worth of my general scheme will then lie
in the fact that, in the light of this scheme, we
can, as it were, see the commonplace virtues
transfigured and glorified by their relation to
the one highest cause of all. My thesis is
that all the commonplace virtues, in so far as
they are indeed defensible and effective, are

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

special forms of loyalty to loyalty, and are to be
justified, centralized, inspired, by the one su
preme effort to do good, namely, the effort to
make loyalty triumphant in the lives of all men.
The first consideration which I shall here
insist upon is this: Loyalty, as we have all
along seen, depends upon a very character
istic and subtle union of natural interest, and
of free choice. Nobody who merely follows
his natural impulses as they come is loyal.
Yet nobody can be loyal without depending
upon and using his natural impulses. If I
am to be loyal, my cause must from moment
to moment fascinate me, awaken my muscular
vigor, stir me with some eagerness for work,
even if this be painful work. I cannot be
loyal to barren abstractions. I can only be
loyal to what my life can interpret in bodily
deeds. Loyalty has its elemental appeal to
my whole organism. My cause must become
one with my human life. Yet all this must
occur not without my willing choice. I must
control my devotion. It will possess me, but
not without my voluntary complicity; for I

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LOYALTY TO LOYALTY

shall accept the possession. It is, then, with
the cause to which you personally are loyal, as
it was with divine grace in an older theology.
The cause must control you, as divine grace
took saving control of the sinner; but only
your own will can accept this control, and a
grace that merely compels can never save.

Now that such an union of choice with
natural interest is possible, is a fact of human
nature, which every act of your own, in your
daily calling, may be used to exemplify. You
cannot do steady work without natural in
terest; but whoever is the mere prey of this
passing interest does no steady work. Loy
alty is a perfect synthesis of certain natural
desires, of some range of social conformity,
and of your own deliberate choice.

In order to be loyal, then, to loyalty, I must
indeed first choose forms of loyal conduct
which appeal to my own nature. This means
that, upon one side of my life, I shall have to
behave much as the most unenlightened of
the loyal do. I shall serve causes such as my
natural temperament and my social oppor-

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

tunities suggest to me. I shall choose friends
whom I like. My family, my community,
my country, will be served partly because I
find it interesting to be loyal to them.

Nevertheless, upon another side, all these
my more natural and, so to speak, accidental
loyalties, will be controlled and unified by a
deliberate use of the principle that, whatever
my cause, it ought to be such as to further,
so far as in me lies, the cause of universal
loyalty. Hence I shall not permit my choice
of my special causes to remain a mere chance.
My causes must form a system. They must
constitute in their entirety a single cause, my
life of loyalty. When apparent conflicts arise
amongst the causes in which I am interested,
I shall deliberately undertake, by devices
which we shall hereafter study in these lec
tures, to reduce the conflict to the greatest
possible harmony. Thus, for instance, I may
say, to one of the causes in which I am natu
rally bound up : -

" I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honour more."

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LOYALTY TO LOYALTY

And in this familiar spirit my loyalty will aim
to be, even within the limits of my own per
sonal life, an united, harmonious devotion,
not to various conflicting causes, but to one
system of causes, and so to one cause.

Since this one cause is my choice, the cause
of my life, my social station will indeed sug
gest it to me. My natural powers and pref
erences will make it fascinating to me, and
yet I will never let mere social routine, or
mere social tradition, or mere private caprice,
impose it upon me. I will be individualistic
in my loyalty, carefully insisting, however,
that whatever else I am, I shall be in all my
practical activity a loyal individual, and, so
far as in me lies, one who chooses his per
sonal causes for the sake of the spread of
universal loyalty. Moreover, my loyalty will
be a growing loyalty. Without giving up
old loyalties I shall annex new ones. There
will be evolution in my loyalty.

The choice of my cause will in consequence
be such as to avoid unnecessary conflict with
the causes of others. So far I shall indeed

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

negatively show loyalty to loyalty. It shall
not be my cause to destroy other men s loyalty.
Yet since my cause, thus chosen and thus
organized, still confines me to my narrow
personal range, and since I can do so little
directly for mankind, you may still ask whether,
by such a control of my natural interests, I
am indeed able to do much to serve the cause
of universal loyalty.

Well, it is no part of the plan of this dis
course to encourage illusions about the range
of influence that any one poor mortal can
exert. But that by the mere force of my prac
tical and personal loyalty, if I am indeed loyal,
I am doing something for the cause of universal
loyalty, however narrow my range of deeds,
this a very little experience of the lives of
other people tends to teach me. For who,
after all, most encourages and incites me to
loyalty? I answer, any loyal human being,
whatever his cause, so long as his cause does
not arouse my hatred, and does not directly
injure my chance to be loyal. My fellow s
special and personal cause need not be directly

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LOYALTY TO LOYALTY

mine. Indirectly he inspires me by the very
contagion of his loyalty. He sets me the
example. By his loyalty he shows me the
worth of loyalty. Those humble and obscure
folk of whom I have before spoken, how pre
cious they are to us all as inspiring examples,
because of their loyalty to their own.

From what men, then, have I gained the
best aid in discovering how to be myself
loyal ? From the men whose personal cause
is directly and consciously one with my own ?
That is indeed sometimes the case. But others,
whose personal causes were apparently remote
in very many ways from mine, have helped
me to some of my truest glimpses of loyalty.

For instance : There was a friend of my
own youth whom I have not seen for years,
who once faced the choice between a schol
arly career that he loved, on the one hand, and
a call of honor, upon the other, --who could
have lived out that career with worldly success
if he had only been willing to conspire with
his chief to deceive the public about a matter
of fact, but who unhesitatingly was loyal to

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

loyalty, who spoke the truth, who refused to
conspire, and who, because his chief w r as a
plausible and powerful man, thus delib
erately wrecked his own worldly chances once
for all, and retired into a misunderstood ob
scurity in order that his fellow-men might
henceforth be helped to respect the truth
better. Now, the worldly career which that
friend thus sacrificed for the sake of his loy
alty is far from mine ; the causes that he has
since loyally served have not of late brought
him near to me in worldly doings. I am not
sure that we should ever have kept our inter
ests in close touch with one another even if we
had lived side by side. For he was and is a
highly specialized type of man, austere, and a
little disposed, like many scholars, to a life
apart. For the rest, I have never myself
been put in such a place as his was when he
chose to make his sacrifice, and have never
had his great choice set before me. Nor has
the world rewarded him at all fairly for his
fidelity. He is, then, as this world goes, not
now near to me and not a widely influential

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LOYALTY TO LOYALTY

man. Yet I owe him a great debt. He
showed me, by the example of his free sacri
fice, a good in loyalty which I might other
wise have been too blind to see. He is a man
who does not love flattery. It would be use
less for me now to offer to him either words
of praise or words of comfort. He made his
choice with a single heart and a clear head,
and he has always declined to be praised. But
it will take a long time, in some other world,
should I meet him in such a realm, to tell him
how much I owe to his example, how much he
inspired me, or how many of his fellows he had
indirectly helped to their own loyalty. For I
believe that a good many others besides myself
indirectly owe far more to him than he knows,
or than they know. I believe that certain
standards of loyalty and of scientific truth
fulness in this country are to-day higher than
they were because of the self-surrendering act
of that one devoted scholar.

Loyalty, then, is contagious. It infects not
only the fellow-servant of your own special
cause, but also all who know of this act.

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

Loyalty is a good that spreads. Live it and
you thereby cultivate it in other men. Be
faithful, then, so one may say, to the loyal man ;
be faithful over your few things, for the spirit
of loyalty, secretly passing from you to many
to whom you are a stranger, may even thereby
make you unconsciously ruler over many
things. Loyalty to loyalty is then no unprac
tical cause. And you serve it not by becom
ing a mere citizen of the world, but by serving
your own personal cause. We set before you,
then, no unpractical rule when we repeat our
moral formula in this form : Find your own
cause, your interesting, fascinating, personally
engrossing cause ; serve it with all your might
and soul and strength; but so choose your
cause, and so serve it, that thereby you show
forth your loyalty to loyalty, so that because of
your choice and service of your cause, there is
a maximum of increase of loyalty amongst
your fellow-men.

VII

Yet herewith we have only begun to indi
cate how the cause of loyalty to loyalty may

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LOYALTY TO LOYALTY

be made a cause that one can practically,
efficaciously, and constantly serve. Loyalty,
namely, is not a matter merely of to-day or of
yesterday. The loyal have existed since civ
ilization began. And, even so, loyalty to
loyalty is not a novel undertaking. It began
c;o be eftxctive from the time when first people
could make and keep a temporary truce dur
ing a war, and when first strangers were re
garded as protected by the gods, and when
first the duties of hospitality were recognized.
The way to be loyal to loyalty is therefore
laid down in precisely the rational portion of
the conventional morality which human ex
perience has worked out.

Herewith we approach a thesis which is
central in my whole philosophy of loyalty.
I announced that thesis in other words in the
opening lecture. My thesis is that all those
duties which we have learned to recognize as
the fundamental duties of the civilized man,
the duties that every man owes to every man,
are to be rightly interpreted as special in
stances of loyalty to loyalty. In other words,

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

all the recognized virtues can be defined in
terms of our concept of loyalty. And this is
why I assert that, when rightly interpreted,
loyalty is the whole duty of man.

For consider the best-known facts as to the
indirect influence of certain forms of loyal
conduct. When I speak the truth, my act is
directly an act of loyalty to the personal tie
which then and there binds me to the man to
whom I consent to speak. My special cause
is, in such a case, constituted by this tie. My
fellow and I are linked in a certain unity,
the unity of some transaction which involves
our speech one to another. To be ready to
speak the truth to my fellow is to have, just
then, no eye to see and no tongue to speak save
as this willingly accepted tie demands. In
so far, then, speaking the truth is a special
instance of loyalty. But whoever speaks the
truth, thereby does what he then can do to
help everybody to speak the truth. For he
acts so as to further the general confidence
of man in man. How far such indirect in
fluence may extend, no man can predict.

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LOYALTY TO LOYALTY

Precisely so, in the commercial world, hon
esty in business is a service, not merely and
not mainly to the others who are parties to
the single transaction in which at any one
time this faithfulness is shown. The single
act of business fidelity is an act of loyalty to
that general confidence of man in man upon
which the whole fabric of business rests.
On the contrary, the unfaithful financier
whose disloyalty is the final deed that lets
loose the avalanche of a panic, has done far
more harm to general public confidence than
he could possibly do to those whom his act
directly assails. Honesty, then, is owed not
merely and not even mainly to those with
whom we directly deal when we do honest
acts; it is owed to mankind at large, and it
benefits the community and the general cause
of commercial loyalty.

Such a remark is in itself a commonplace ;
but it serves to make concrete my general the
sis that every form of dutiful action is a case of
loyalty to loyalty. For what holds thus of
truthfulness and of commercial honesty holds,

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

I assert, of every form of dutiful action. Each
such form is a special means for being, by a
concrete deed, loyal to loyalty.

We have sought for the worthy cause ; and
we have found it. This simplest possible of
considerations serves to turn the chaotic
mass of separate precepts of which our ordi
nary conventional moral code consists into
a system unified by the one spirit of universal
loyalty. By your individual deed you indeed
cannot save the world, but you can at any
moment do what in you lies to further the
cause which both for you and for the human
world constitutes the supreme good, namely,
the cause of universal loyalty. Herein con
sists your entire duty.

Review in the light of this simple considera
tion, the usually recognized range of human
duties. How easily they group themselves
about the one principle : Be loyal to loyalty.

Have I, for instance, duties to myself?
Yes, precisely in so far as I have the duty to
be actively loyal at all. For loyalty needs not
only a willing, but also an effective servant.

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LOYALTY TO LOYALTY

My duty to myself is, then, the duty to pro
vide my cause with one who is strong enough
and skilful enough to be effective according
to my own natural powers. The care of
health, self-cultivation, self-control, spiritual
power these are all to be morally estimated
with reference to the one principle that, since
I have no eyes to see or tongue to speak save as
the cause commands, I will be as worthy an
instrument of the cause as can be made, by
my own efforts, out of the poor material which
my scrap of human nature provides. The
highest personal cultivation for which I have
time is thus required by our principle. But
self-cultivation which is not related to loyalty
is worthless.

Have I private and personal rights, which
I ought to assert ? Yes, precisely in so far
as my private powers and possessions are
held in trust for the cause, and are, upon
occasion, to be defended for the sake of the
cause. My rights are morally the outcome
of my loyalty. It is my right to protect my
service, to maintain my office, and to keep

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

my own merely in order that I may use my
own as the cause commands. But rights
which are not determined by my loyalty
are vain pretence.

As to my duties to my neighbors, these
are defined by a well-known tradition in
terms of two principles, justice and benevo
lence. These two principles are mere aspects
of our one principle. Justice means, in
general, fidelity to human ties in so far as
they are ties. Justice thus concerns itself
with what may be called the mere forms in
which loyalty expresses itself. Justice, there
fore, is simply one aspect of loyalty the more
formal and abstract side of loyal life. If
you are just, you are decisive in your choice
of your personal cause, you are faithful to
the loyal decision once made, you keep your
promise, you speak the truth, you respect
the loyal ties of all other men, and you con
tend with other men only in so far as the
defence of your own cause, in the interest of
loyalty to the universal cause of loyalty,
makes such contest against aggression un-

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LOYALTY TO LOYALTY

avoidable. All these types of activity,
within the limits that loyalty determines, are
demanded if you are to be loyal to loyalty.
Our principle thus at once requires them, and
enables us to define their range of application.
But justice, without loyalty, is a vicious for
malism.

Benevolence, on the other hand, is that
aspect of loyalty which directly concerns itself
with your influence upon the inner life of
human beings who enjoy, who suffer, and
whose private good is to be affected by your
deeds. Since no personal good that your
fellow can possess is superior to his own
loyalty, your own loyalty to loyalty is itself
a supremely benevolent type of activity.
And since your fellow-man is an instrument
for the furtherance of the cause of universal
loyalty, his welfare also concerns you, in so
far as, if you help him to a more efficient life,
you make him better able to be loyal. Thus
benevolence is an inevitable attendant of
loyalty. And the spirit of loyalty to loy
alty enables us to define wherein consists a

L 145

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

wise benevolence. Benevolence without loy
alty is a dangerous sentiment alism. Thus \\
viewed, then, loyalty to universal loyalty is ^
indeed the fulfilment of the whole law.

146

IV

CONSCIENCE

LECTURE IV

CONSCIENCE

ONE of the main purposes of these lectures
is to simplify our conceptions of duty and
of the good. When I am in a practical per
plexity, such as often arises in daily life, that
friend can best advise me who helps me to
ignore useless complications, to see simply
and directly, to look at the central facts of
my situation. And even so, when a moral
ist attempts a rational theory of duty, he
ought, like the practical adviser of a friend
in perplexity, to do what he can to rid our
moral situation of its confusing complications.
In these lectures I am trying to accomplish
this end by centralizing our duties about the
one conception of loyalty.

I

Conventional morality, as it is usually
taught to us, consists of a maze of precepts.
Some of these precepts we have acquired

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

through the influence of Christianity. Some
of them are distinctly unchristian, or even
antichristian. Whatever their origin, whether
Christian or Greek or barbarian, they lie
side by side in our minds; and sometimes
they tend to come into conflict with one
another. Be just; but also be kind. Be
generous ; but also be strict in demanding
what is your due. Live for others; but be
careful of your own dignity, and assert your
rights. Love all mankind; but resent in
sults, and be ready to slay the enemies of
your country. Take no thought for the
morrow; but be careful to save and to in
sure. Cultivate yourself; but always sacrifice
yourself. Forget yourself; but never be so
thoughtless in conduct that others shall justly
say, "You have forgotten yourself." Be mod
erate in all things ; but know no moderation
in your devotion to righteousness. Such are
a few of the well-known paradoxes of our
popular morality. And these paradoxes are,
for the most part, no mere accidents. Nearly
all of these apparently conflicting moral max-

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CONSCIENCE

ims express some significant truth. What we
want is a method of finding our way through
the maze, a principle that shall unify our
moral life, and that shall enable us to solve
its paradoxes.

Such a centralizing and unifying principle
we tried to propose at the last lecture. Our
topic in the foregoing discussion was the
question : By what criterion may we know
that a proposed cause is one which is worthy
of our loyalty? We answered the question
by asserting that there is in any case one
cause which is worthy of every man s loyalty.
And that is the cause of loyalty itself. Do
what you can to make men loyal, and to keep
them in a loyal attitude ; this was the sense of
the general precept that we derived from our
study of the value of loyalty to those who are
loyal. W 7 hoever follows this precept inevi
tably defines for himself a cause, and becomes
loyal to that cause. His sovereign and central
moral maxim may otherwise be stated thus:
Be loyal to loyalty.

Our reasons for asserting that this maxim

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

is a sound guide to dutiful action were these :
First, the primal fact that loyalty, in any man
who possesses it, is his supreme good. Sec
ondly, the further fact that such loyalty is not
a good which only a few are able to get, an
aristocratic possession of a small company of
saints ; but it is, on the contrary, a good which
is accessible to all sorts and conditions of men,
so far as they have normal human interests
and normal self-control. We saw that there
is no sort of wholesome human life which does
not furnish opportunities for loyalty. And
whoever is loyal wins, whatever his social
station, and precisely in so far as he is loyal,
the same general form of spiritual fulfilment,
namely, self-possession through self -surrender.
The keeper of a lonely lighthouse and the
leader of a busy social order, the housemaid
and the king, have almost equal opportunities
to devote the self to its own chosen cause, and
to win the good of such devotion. In conse
quence of these two considerations, whoever
undertakes to further the general cause of
loyalty, is certainly aiming at the supreme

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CONSCIENCE

good of mankind at large. His cause, there
fore, is certainly a worthy cause.

Nor is the undertaking to further the gen
eral cause of loyalty itself an unpractical
undertaking, --a vague philanthropy. On
the contrary, of all the efforts that you can
make on behalf of your fellow-men, the effort
to make them loyal to causes of their own is
probably the most generally and widely prac
ticable. It is notoriously hard, by any direct
philanthropic effort, to give good fortune to any
man, except to some few of those with whose
fortunes you are most closely linked. Certain
forms of suffering can be relieved by the hospi
tals, or by private skill and kindness. But
when the sufferer is relieved, he stands once
more merely on the threshold of life, and the
question, What can you do to give him life it
self ? is not yet answered. If, hereupon, you try
to make your fellow-man prosperous, by offer
ing to him unearned good fortune, you may in
fact merely teach him to be wasteful and in
dolent. If you seek to deal out happiness to
him by devices of your own, you find that he

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

generally prefers to look for happiness in his
own way. If you attempt to give him content
ment, you come into conflict with his insati
able natural desires.

But if you undertake to make him loyal,
there is indeed much that you can do. For,
as I pointed out at the close of the last lecture,
all of what common sense rightly regards as
your ordinary duties to mankind may be
viewed, and ought to be viewed, as prac
tically effective ways of helping on the cause
of general loyalty. Thus, you can speak the
truth to your fellow, and can thereby help
him to a better confidence in mankind. This
confidence in mankind will aid him in turn to
speak the truth himself. And in truth-speak
ing there will be for him much real peace, for
truth-speaking is a form of loyalty and will
aid him to be otherwise loyal to his own. Pre
cisely so, there are as many other ways of
helping him to be loyal as there are other
such obvious and commonly recognized du
ties to be done in your ordinary and peaceful
dealings with him.

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CONSCIENCE

Let me mention one further instance that
was not used amongst our illustrations at the
last meeting: The true value of courtesy
in ordinary human intercourse lies in the fact
that courtesy is one expression of loyalty to
loyalty, and helps every one who either re
ceives or witnesses courtesy to assume him
self a loyal attitude towards all the causes that
are represented by the peaceful and reasonable
dealings of man with man. The forms of
courtesy, in fact, are largely derived from
what once were, or still are, more or less cere
monious expressions of loyal devotion. Cour
tesy, then, may be defined as an explicit assump
tion of a loyal bearing. To adopt such a
bearing with a real sincerity of heart is to
express, in your passing actions, loyalty to
universal loyalty. To act thus towards your
individual fellow-man is then and there to
help all who know of your act to be loyal.
Courtesy, then, is a duty owed not so much to
the individual to whom you are courteous,
as to humanity at large.

There are, then, many ways of aiding your

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

fellow-man to be loyal. Now, as we also
set forth at the last lecture, one of the most
effective of these ways lies in being loyal your
self to some personally chosen and determi
nate social cause which constitutes your busi
ness. This special cause need not be one in
which the particular fellow-man whom you
are just now to help is, at the moment, directly
interested. Your very loyalty to your own
cause will tend to prove infectious. Who
ever is loyal to his own therefore helps on the
cause of universal loyalty by his every act
of devotion, precisely in so far as he refrains
from any hostile attack upon the loyalty of
other people, and simply lets his example of
loyalty work. Whoever makes the further
ance of universal loyalty his cause, lacks,
therefore, neither practical means nor pres
ent opportunity for serving his cause.

To each man our principle therefore says :
Live in your own way a loyal life and one
subject to the general principle of loyalty to
loyalty. Serve your own cause, but so choose
it and so serve it that in consequence of your

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CONSCIENCE

life loyalty amongst men shall prosper. For
tune may indeed make the range of your
choice of your calling very narrow. Neces
sity may bind you to an irksome round of
tasks. But sweeten these with whatever loy
alty you can consistently get into your life.
Let loyalty be your pearl of great price. Sell
all the happiness that you possess or can get
in disloyal or in non-loyal activities, and buy
that pearl. When you once have found, or
begun to find, your personal cause, be as stead
ily faithful to it as loyalty to loyalty henceforth
permits. That is, if you find that a cause
once chosen does indeed involve disloyalty
to loyalty, as one might find who, having
sworn fidelity to a leader, afterwards discov
ered his leader to be a traitor to the cause
of mankind, you may have altogether to
abandon the cause first chosen. But never
abandon a cause except for the sake of some
higher or deeper loyalty such as actually
requires the change.

Meanwhile, the principle of loyalty to
loyalty obviously requires you to respect loyalty

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

in all men, wherever you find it. If your
fellow s cause has, in a given case, assailed
your own, and if, in the world as it is, conflict
is inevitable, you may then have to war with
your fellow s cause, in order to be loyal to
your own. But even then, you may never
assail whatever is sincere and genuine about
his spirit of loyalty. Even if your fellow s
cause involves disloyalty to mankind at large,
you may not condemn the loyalty of your fellow
in so far as it is loyalty. You may condemn
only his blindly chosen cause. All the loyal
are brethren. They are children of one
spirit. Loyalty to loyalty involves the active
furtherance of this spirit wherever it appears.
Fair play in sport, chivalrous respect for the
adversary in war, tolerance of the sincere
beliefs of other men, all these virtues are
thus to be viewed as mere variations of loy
alty to loyalty. Prevent the conflict of loyal
ties when you can, minimize such conflict
where it exists, and, by means of fair play
and of the chivalrous attitude towards the
opponent, utilize even conflict, where it is

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CONSCIENCE

inevitable, so as to further the cause of loyalty
to loyalty. Such maxims are obvious conse
quences of our principle. Do we not gain,
then, a great deal from our principle in the way
of unifying our moral code ?

II

But next, as to those just-mentioned para
doxes of popular morality, do we not gain
from our principle a guide to help us through
the maze? "Be just; but also be kind."
These two precepts, so far as they are sound,
merely emphasize, as we pointed out at the
close of our last lecture, two distinct but
inseparable aspects of loyalty. My cause
links my fellow and myself by social ties
which, in the light of our usual human inter
pretation of life, appear to stand for super-
personal interests, for interests in property
rights, in formal obligations, in promises, in
various abstractly definable relations. If I
am loyal, I respect these relations. And I do so
since, from the very definition of a cause to
which one can be loyal, this cause will become

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

nothing unless these ties are preserved intact.
But to respect relations as such is to be what
men call just. Meanwhile, our common cause
also personally interests both my fellow and
myself. So far as we both know the cause,
we love it, and delight in it. Hence in being
loyal to our cause, I am also being kind to my
fellow. For hereby I further his delight in
just so far as I help him to insight. But
kindness which is not bound up with loyalty
is as a sounding brass and as a tinkling cymbal,
a mere sentimentalism. And abstract justice,
apart from loyalty, is a cruel formalism. My
fellow wants to be loyal. This is his deepest
need. If I am loyal to that need, I therefore
truly delight him. But kindness that is not
bound up with loyalty may indeed amuse
my fellow for a moment. Yet like "fancy,"
such kindness "dies in the cradle where it
lies." Even so, if I am loyal, I am also just.
But justice that is no aspect of loyalty has no
reason for existence. The true relations of
benevolence and justice can therefore be best
defined in terms of our conception of loyalty.

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CONSCIENCE

If any one says, "I will show thee my justice
or my kindness without my loyalty," the loyal
man may rightly respond, " I will show thee my
kindness and my justice by my loyalty."

In a similar fashion, the moral problems
regarding the right relations of strictness to
generosity, of prudent foresight to present
confidence, of self-surrender to self-assertion,
of love to the righteous resistance of enemies,
- all these moral problems, I say, are best to
be solved in terms of the principle of loyalty to
loyalty. As to the problem of the true concern
and regard for the self, the loyal man culti
vates himself, and is careful of his property
rights, just in order to furnish to his cause an
effective instrument; but he aims to forget
precisely so much of himself as is, at any time,
an obstruction to his loyalty ; and he also aims
to be careless of whatever about his private
fortunes may be of no importance to his ser
vice of the cause. When he asserts himself,
he does so because he has neither eyes to see nor
tongue to speak save as his cause commands ;
and it is of precisely such self-sacrificing self-

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

assertion that the foes of his cause would do
well to beware. All the paradoxes about the
care of self and the abandonment of self are
thus soluble in terms of loyalty. Whoever
knows and possesses the loyal attitude, ipso
facto solves these paradoxes in each special
case as it arises. And whoever comprehends
the nature of loyalty to loyalty, as it is ex
pressed in the form of fair play in sport, of
chivalry in war, of tolerance in belief, and of
the spirit that seeks to prevent the conflict of
loyalties where such prevention is possible,
whoever, I say, thus comprehends what
loyalty to loyalty means, holds the key to all
the familiar mysteries about the right relation
of the love of man to the strenuous virtues,
and to the ethics of conflict.

Ill

As you see, it is my deliberate intention to
maintain that the principle of loyalty to loyalty
is a sufficient expression of what common sense
calls "the dictates of conscience." When I
state this thesis, it leads me, however, to a

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CONSCIENCE

somewhat new question, which the title of
this lecture is intended to emphasize.

Stated practically, this our next question
takes the form of asking: Is the principle of
loyalty to loyalty not only a means of solving
certain perplexities, but an actually general,
safe, and sufficient test of what is right and
wrong in the doubtful moral situations which
may arise in daily life ? We have shown that
the well-recognized duties and virtues, such
as those which have to do with truth-speak
ing, with courtesy, with fair play in sport, and
with chivalrous regard for enemies, can indeed
be regarded, if we choose, as special forms of
loyalty to loyalty. But it is indeed one
thing (as you may now interpose) to interpret
in terms of our principle certain virtues or
duties that we already recognize. It is another
thing to use the concept of loyalty to loyalty
as an universal means of finding out what it is
right to do when one is otherwise in doubt.
Is our principle always a serviceable prac
tical guide ? Or, to use the well-known term,
does our principle adequately express what

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

people usually mean by the "dictates of con
science" ?

The word "conscience," which here becomes
important for our philosophy of loyalty, is a
term of many uses. The problem as to the
true nature of the human conscience is a com
plicated and difficult one. I shall here deal
with the matter only in so far as is necessary
for our own distinctly practical purpose. In
expounding my precept, Be loyal to loyalty, I
have set forth what does indeed pretend to be
a general guiding maxim for conduct. But
most of us, when we say, " My conscience dic
tates this or this sort of conduct," are not
disposed to think of conscience as definable
in terms of any one maxim. Our conscience
seems to us to represent, in our ordinary lives,
a good many related but nevertheless dis
tinct motives, such as prudence, charity,
reasonableness, piety, and so on. Conscience
also seems to us somewhat mysterious in
many of its demands, so that we often say,
"I do not precisely know why this or this is
right; but I feel sure that it is right, for my

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CONSCIENCE

conscience tells me so." Since, then, con
science seems so complex and sometimes so
mysterious a power, you may naturally hesi
tate to accept the views of a moralist who
attempts, as you may think, to simplify too
much the requirements of conscience. You
may still insist that the moral doctrine which
I have so far set forth is in one respect like all
other philosophies of conduct that fill the
history of ethical thought; because, as you
may insist, this theory is powerless to tell
any one what to do when a really perplexing
case of conscience arises.

The reproach that moral philosophers have
fine-sounding principles to report, but can
never tell us how these principles practically
apply, except when the cases are such as
common sense has already decided, --this is
an old objection to philosophical ethics. I
want to show you how I myself meet that
objection, and in what way, and to what extent,
as I think, the principle of loyalty to loyalty
does express the true dictates of conscience,
and does tell us what to do in doubtful cases.

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

What is conscience? You will all agree
that the word names a mental possession of
ours which enables us to pass some sort of
judgment, correct or mistaken, upon moral
questions as they arise. My conscience, then,
belongs to my mental equipment, and tells
me about right and wrong conduct. More
over, my conscience approves or disapproves
my conduct, excuses me or accuses me.
About the general nature and office of the
conscience we all of us, as I suppose, so far
agree. Our differences regarding our con
science begin when questions arise of the
following sort : Is our conscience inborn ?
Is it acquired by training? Are its dictates
the same in all men ? Is it God-given ? Is it
infallible ? Is it a separate power of the mind ?
Or is it simply a name for a collection of habits
of moral judgment which we have acquired
through social training, through reasoning,
and through personal experience of the con
sequences of conduct ?

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CONSCIENCE

IV

In trying to meet these questions so far as
they here concern us, it is important next to
note a few fundamental features which char
acterize the personal life of all of us. The
first of these features appears if one, instead
of stopping with the question, "What is my
conscience?" goes deeper still and asks the
question, "Who and what am I?" This
latter question also has indeed countless as
pects, and a complete answer to it would con
stitute an entire system of metaphysics. But
for our present purpose it is enough to note
that I cannot answer the question, "Who am
I ?" except in terms of some sort of statement
of the plans and purposes of my life. In re
sponding to the question, "Who are you?"
a man may first mention his name. But his
name is a mere tag. He then often goes on to
tell where he lives, and where he comes from.
His home and his birthplace, however, are
already what one may call purposeful aspects
of his personality. For dwelling-place, coun-

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

try, birthplace, and similar incidental facts
about a man tend to throw light upon his per
sonality mainly because they are of importance
for a further knowledge of his social relations,
and so of his social uses and activities.

But the answer to the question, "Who are
you?" really begins in earnest when a man
mentions his calling, and so actually sets out
upon the definition of his purposes and of the
way in which these purposes get expressed in
his life. And when a man goes on to say,
"I am the doer of these and these deeds, the
friend of these friends, the enemy of these
opposing purposes, the member of this family,
the one whose ideals are such and such, and
are so and so expressed in my life," the man
expresses to you at length whatever is most ex
pressible and worth knowing in answer to the
question, "Who are you?"

To sum up, then, I should say that a person,
an individual self, may be defined as a human
life lived according to a plan. If a man could
live with no plan at all, purposelessly and quite
passively, he would in so far be an organism,

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and also, if you choose, he would be a psycho
logical specimen, but he would be no per
sonality. Wherever there is personality, there
are purposes worked out in life. If, as often
happens, there are many purposes connected
with the life of this human creature, many
plans in this life, but no discoverable unity and
coherence of these plans, then in so far there
are many glimpses of selfhood, many fragmen
tary selves present in connection with the life
of some human organism. But there is so far
no one self, no one person discoverable. You
are one self just in so far as the life that goes
on in connection with your organism has some
one purpose running through it. By the terms
" this person " and " this self," then, we mean
this human life in so far as it expresses some one
purpose. Yet, of course, this one purpose which
is expressed in the life of a single self need not
be one which is defined by this self in abstract
terms. On the contrary, most of us are aware
that our lives are unified, after a fashion, by
the very effort that we more or less vaguely
make to assert ourselves somehow as individ-

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

uals in our world. Many of us have not yet
found out how it would be best to assert our
selves. But we are trying to find out. This
very effort to find out gives already a certain
unity of purpose to our lives.

But in so far as we have indeed found out
some cause, far larger than our individual
selves, to which we are fully ready to be loyal,
this very cause serves to give the required
unity to our lives, and so to determine what
manner of self each of us is, even though we
chance to be unable to define in abstract terms
what is the precise nature of this very cause.
Loyalty may be sometimes almost dumb ; it
is so in many of those obscure and humble
models of loyalty of whom I have already
spoken. They express their loyalty clearly
enough in deeds. They often could not very
well formulate it in words. They could not
give an abstract account of their business. Yet
their loyalty gives them a business. It unifies
their activities. It makes of each of these
loyal beings an individual self, a life unified
by a purpose. This purpose may in such

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cases come to consciousness merely as a willing
hunger to serve the cause, a proud obedience
to the ideal call. But in any case, wherever
loyalty is, there is selfhood, personality, indi
vidual purpose embodied in a life.

And now, further, if the argument of our
first and second lectures is right, wherever a
human selfhood gets practically and consciously
unified, there is some form of loyalty. For,
except in terms of some sort of loyal purpose,
as we saw, this mass of instincts, of passions,
of social interests, and of private rebellious
ness, whereof the nature of any one of us is
originally compounded, can never get any
effective unity whatever.

To sum up so far, a self is a life in so far
as it is unified by a single purpose. Our
loyalties furnish such purposes, and hence
make of us conscious and unified moral per
sons. Where loyalty has not yet come to any
sort of definiteness, there is so far present only
a kind of inarticulate striving to be an indi
vidual self. This very search for one s true
self is already a sort of life-purpose, which, as

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

far as it goes, individuates the life of the person
in question, and gives him a task. But loyalty
brings the individual to full moral self-con
sciousness. It is devoting the self to a cause
that, after all, first makes it a rational and uni
fied self, instead of what the life of too many a
man remains, namely, a cauldron of seeth
ing and bubbling efforts to be somebody, a
cauldron which boils dry when life ends.

V

But what, you may now ask, has all this view
of the self to do with conscience ? I answer
that the nature of conscience can be under
stood solely in terms of such a theory of the
self as the one just sketched.

Suppose that I am, in the foregoing sense, a
more or less completely unified and loyal self.
Then there are two aspects of this selfhood
which is mine. I live a life ; and I have, as a
loyal being, an ideal. The life itself is not the
ideal. They are and always remain in some
sense distinct. For no one act of my life,
and no limited set of acts of mine, can ever

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completely embody my ideal. My ideal comes
to me from my cause, as the ideal of the Speaker
of the House of Commons, in the story that
we have already used to illustrate loyalty,
came to him from the House. My cause, how
ever, is greater than my individual life. Hence
it always sets before me an ideal which de
mands more of me than I have yet done,
more, too, than I can ever at any one instant
accomplish. Even because of this vastness
of my ideal, even because that to which I am
loyal is so much greater than I ever become,
even because of all this can my ideal unify my
life, and make a rational self of me.

Hence, if I am indeed one self, my one ideal
is always something that stands over against
my actual life; and each act of this life has
to be judged, estimated, determined, as to its
moral value, in terms of the ideal. My cause,
therefore, as it expresses itself to my own con
sciousness through my personal ideal, my
cause and my ideal taken together, and viewed
as one, perform the precise function which tra
dition has attributed to conscience. My cause,

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

then, for our philosophy of loyalty, is my con
science, my cause as interpreted through my
ideal of my personal life. When I look to my
cause, it furnishes me with a conscience ; for
it sets before me a plan or ideal of life, and
then constantly bids me contrast this plan,
this ideal, with my transient and momentary
impulses.

To illustrate : Were I a loyal judge on the
bench, whose cause was my official function,
then my judicial conscience would be simply
my whole ideal as a judge, when this ideal was
contrasted with any of my present and nar
rower views of the situation directly before me.
If, at a given moment, I tended to lay unfair
stress upon one side of a controversy that had
been brought into my court, my ideal would
say : But a judge is impartial. If I were dis
posed to decide with inadvised haste, the ideal
would say : But a judge takes account of the
whole law bearing on the case. If I were
offered bribes, my judicial conscience would
reject them as being once for all ideally intol
erable. In order to have such a judicial con-

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CONSCIENCE

science, I should, of course, have to be able to
view my profession as the carrying out of some
one purpose, and so as one cause. This pur
pose I should have learned, of course, from the
traditions of the office. But I should have had
willingly to adopt these traditions as my own,
and to conceive my own life in terms of them,
in order to have a judicial conscience of my
own. Analogous comments could be made
upon the conscience of an artist, of a states
man, of a friend, or of a devoted member of a
family, of any one who has a conscience. To
have a conscience, then, is to have a cause, to
unify your life by means of an ideal determined
by this cause, and to compare the ideal and
the life.

If this analysis is right, your conscience is
simply that ideal of life which constitutes your
moral personality. In having your conscience
you become aware of your plan of being your
self and nobody else. Your conscience pre
sents to you this plan, however, in so far as the
plan or ideal in question is distinct from the
life in which you are trying to embody your

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

plan. Your life as it is lived, your experi
ences, feelings, deeds, these are the embodi
ment of your ideal plan, in so far as your ideal
plan for your own individual life as this self,
gets embodied at all.

But no one act of yours ever expresses your
plan of life perfectly. Since you thus always
have your cause beyond you, there is always
more to do. So the plan or ideal of life comes
to stand over against your actual life as a gen
eral authority by which each deed is to be
tested, just as the judicial conscience of the
judge on the bench tests each of his official
acts by comparing it with his personal ideal
of what a judge should be. My conscience,
therefore, is the very ideal that makes me this
rational self, the very cause that inspires and
that unifies me. Viewed as something within
myself, my conscience is the spirit of the self,
first moving on the face of the waters of natural
desire, and then gradually creating the heav
ens and the earth of this life of the individual
man. This spirit informs all of my true self,
yet is nowhere fully expressed in any deed.

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CONSCIENCE

So that, in so far as we contrast the ideal with
the single deed, we judge ourselves, condemn
ourselves, or approve ourselves.

Our philosophy of loyalty thus furnishes us
with a theory of a certain kind of conscious
ness which, in any case, precisely fulfils the
functions of the traditional conscience. I need
hardly say that the conscience which I have
now described is not in its entirety at all innate.
On the contrary, it is the flower rather than the
root of the moral life. But unquestionably
we should never get it unless we possessed an
innate power to become reasonable, unless we
were socially disposed beings, unless we were
able so to develop our reason and our social
powers as to see that the good of mankind is
indeed also our own good, and, in brief, unless
we inherited a genuine moral nature.

With this view of the nature of conscience,
what can we say as to the infallibility of such
a conscience ? I answer : My conscience is pre
cisely as fallible or as infallible as my choice of
a cause is subject to error, or is of such nature
as to lead me aright. Since loyalty, in so far

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

as it is loyalty, is always a good, the conscience
of any loyal self is never wholly a false guide.
Since loyalty may be in many respects blind,
one s conscience also may be in many respects
misleading. On the other hand, your con
science, at any stage of its development, is
unquestionably the best moral guide that you
then have, simply because, so far as it is viewed
as an authority outside of you, it is your ideal,
your cause, set before you ; while, in so far as
it is within you, it is the spirit of your own
self, the very ideal that makes you any rational
moral person whatever. Apart from it you
are a mere pretence of moral personality, a
manifold fermentation of desires. And as
you have only your own life to live, your con
science alone can teach you how to live that
life. But your conscience will doubtless grow
with you, just as your loyalty and your cause
will grow. The best way to make both of them
grow is to render up your life to their service
and to their expression.

Conscience, as thus defined, is for each of
us a personal affair. In so far as many of us

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CONSCIENCE

are fellow-servants of the same cause, and,
above all, in so far as all of us, if we are en
lightened, are fellow-servants of the one cause
of universal loyalty, we do indeed share in the
same conscience. But in so far as no two of
us can live the same life, or be the same indi
vidual human self, it follows that no two of us
can possess identical consciences, and that no
two of us should wish to do so. Your con
science is not mine; yet I share with you
the same infinite realm of moral truth, and we
are subject to the same requirement of loyalty
to loyalty. This requirement must interpret
itself to us all in endlessly varied ways. The
loyal are not all monotonously doing the same
thing. Yet they individually partake of the one
endlessly varied and manifold spirit of loyalty.
As to whether conscience is in any sense
divine, we shall learn something in our closing
lecture upon the relations of Loyalty and
Religion.

VI

So far as is needful for our present practical
purpose, the theory of the conscience which our

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

philosophy of loyalty requires is now before
you. We needed this theory in order to pre
pare the way for answering the question :
In how far does the law, Be loyal to loyalty,
enable us to decide cases of moral doubt ? In
how far does this principle furnish a means
of discovering these special precepts about
single cases which common sense calls the
"dictates of conscience"?

How do moral doubts arise in the mind of
a loyal person ? I answer : Moral doubts arise
in the loyal mind when there is an apparent
conflict between loyalties. As a fact, that
cause, which in any sense unifies a life as com
plex as my human life is, must of course be
no perfectly simple cause. By virtue of my
nature and of my social training, I belong to a
family, to a community, to a calling, to a state,
to humanity. In order to be loyal to loyalty,
and in order to be a person at all, I must indeed
unify my loyalty. In the meantime, however,
I must also choose special causes to serve;
and if these causes are to interest me, if they
are to engross and to possess me, they must be

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CONSCIENCE

such as together appeal to many diverse sides
of my nature; they must involve me in nu
merous and often conflicting social tasks ; they
can form one cause only in so far as they con
stitute an entire system of causes. My loyalty
will be subject, therefore, to the ancient diffi
culty regarding the one and the many. Unless
it is one in its ultimate aim, it will be no loyalty
to universal loyalty ; unless it is just to the va
ried instincts and to the manifold social interests
of a being such as I am, it cannot engross me.
Despite this great difficulty, however, the
loyal all about us show us that this union of
one and many in life is, at least in great por
tions of long human careers, a possible thing.
We never completely win the union ; we never
realize to the full the one loyal life ; but in so
far as :ve are loyal, we win enough of this unity
of life to be able to understand the ideal, and
to make it our own guide. Our question still
remains, however, this : Since the only loyal
life that we can undertake to live is so complex,
since the one cause of universal loyalty can
only be served, by each of us, in a personal

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

life wherein we have to try to unify various spe
cial loyalties, and since, in many cases, these
special loyalties seem to us to conflict with one
another, how shall we decide, as between
two apparently conflicting loyalties, which one
to follow ? Does our principle tell us what to
do when loyalties thus seem to us to be in con
flict with one another ?

It is, of course, not sufficient to answer
here that loyalty to loyalty requires us to do
whatever can be done to harmonize apparently
conflicting loyalties, and to remove the con
flict of loyalties from the world, and to utilize
even conflict, where it is inevitable, so as to
further general loyalty. That answer we have
already considered in an earlier passage of this
discussion. It is a sound answer; but it does
not meet those cases where conflict is forced
upon us, and where we ourselves must take
sides, and must annul or destroy one or two
conflicting loyalties. One or two illustrations
of such a type will serve to show what sorts
of moral doubts our own philosophy of loyalty
has especially to consider.

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CONSCIENCE

At the outset of our Civil War, many men of
the border states, and many who had already
been in the service of the Union, but who were
conscious of special personal duties to single
states of the Union, found themselves in
presence of a well-known conflict of loyalties.
Consider the personal problem that the future
General Lee had to solve. Could the precept, .
Be loyal to loyalty, and to that end, choose your
own personal cause and be loyal thereto, could
this principle, you may say, have been of any
service in deciding for Lee his personal problem
at the critical moment ?

Or again, to take a problem such as some of
my own students have more than once urged,
in various instances, as a test case for my
theory of loyalty to decide : A young woman,
after a thorough modern professional training,
begins a career which promises not only worldly
success, but general good to the community in
which she works. She is heartily loyal to her
profession. It is a beneficent profession. She
will probably make her mark in that field if
she chooses to go on. Meanwhile she is loyal

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

to her own family. And into the home, which
she has left for her work, disease, perhaps
death, enters. Her younger brothers and sis
ters are now unexpectedly in need of such care
as hers ; or the young family of her elder brother
or sister, through the death of their father or
mother, has come to be without due parental
care. As elder sister or as maiden aunt this
young woman could henceforth devote herself
to family tasks that would mean very much
for the little ones in question. But this devo
tion would also mean years of complete absorp
tion in these family tasks, and would also mean
an entire abandonment of the profession so
hopefully begun, and of all the good that she
can now be fairly sure of doing if she continues
in that field.

What are the dictates of conscience ? How
shall this young woman solve her problem ?
How shall she decide between these conflicting
loyalties ? To be loyal to the family, to the
needs of brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, -
surely this is indeed devotion of a self to a
cause. But to be loyal to her chosen profes-

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CONSCIENCE

sion, which, in this case, is no mere hope, but
which is already an actual and successful task,
-is not that also loyalty to a cause? And
does the principle, Be loyal to loyalty, decide
which of these two causes is the one for this
young woman to serve ?

These two cases of conscience may serve as
examples of the vast range of instances of a
conflict of loyalties. And now you may ask:
What will our principle do to decide such
cases ?

VII

I reply at once by emphasizing the fact that
the precept, Be loyal to loyalty, implies two char
acteristics of loyal conduct which are, to my
mind, inseparable. The first characteristic
is Decisiveness on the part of the loyal moral
agent. The second characteristic is Fidelity
to loyal decisions once made, in so far as later
insight does not clearly forbid the continuance
of such fidelity. Let me indicate what I mean
by these two characteristics.

Loyalty to loyalty is never a merely pious
wish. It is personal devotion. This devotion

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

shows itself by action, not by mere sentiments.
Loyalty to loyalty hence requires the choice of
some definite mode of action. And this mode
of action involves, in critical cases, some new
choice of a personal cause, through which the
loyal agent undertakes to serve henceforth, as
best he can, the general cause of the loyalty
of mankind. Now, my special choice of my
personal cause is always fallible. For I can
never know with certainty but that, if I were
wiser, I should better see my way to serving
universal loyalty than I now see it. Thus, if
I choose to be loyal to loyalty by becoming
a loyal clerk or a watchman or a lighthouse
keeper, I can never know but that, in some
other calling, I might have done better. Now,
it is no part of the precept, Be loyal to loyalty,
to tell me, or to pretend to tell me, what my
most effective vocation is. Doubts about that
topic are in so far not moral doubts. They are
mere expressions of my general ignorance of the
world and of my own powers. If I indeed hap
pen to know that I have no power to make a
good clerk or a good watchman, the precept

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CONSCIENCE

about loyalty then tells me that it would be dis
loyal to waste my powers in an undertaking for
which I am so unfit. If, of various possible
ways of undertaking to be loyal to loyalty,
my present insight already tells me that one
will, in my case, certainly succeed best of all,
then, indeed, the general principle of loyalty
requires me to have neither eyes to see nor
tongue to speak save as this best mode of ser
vice commands. But if, at the critical mo
ment, I cannot predict which of two modes of
serving the cause of loyalty to loyalty will lead
to the more complete success in such service,
the general principle certainly cannot tell me
which of these two modes of service to choose.
And, nevertheless, the principle does not
desert me, even at the moment of my great
est ignorance. It is still my guide. For it
now becomes the principle, Have a cause;
choose your cause; be decisive. In this form
the principle is just as practical as it would be
if my knowledge of the world and of my own
powers were infallible. For it forbids coward
ice; it forbids hesitancy beyond the point

187

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

where further consideration can be reason
ably expected, for the present, to throw new
light on the situation. It forbids me to
play Hamlet s part. It requires me, in a loyal
spirit and in the light of all that I now know,
to choose and to proceed to action, not as one
who believes himself omniscient, but as one
who knows that the only way to be loyal is to
act loyally, however ignorantly one has to act.
Otherwise stated, the case is this. I hesi
tate at the critical moment between conflicting
causes. For the sake of loyalty to loyalty,
which one of two conflicting special causes
shall I henceforth undertake to serve ? This
is my question. If I knew what is to be the
outcome, I could at once easily choose. I
am ignorant of the outcome. In so far I
indeed cannot tell which to choose. But in
one respect I am, nevertheless, already com
mitted. I have already undertaken to be
loyal to loyalty. In so far, then, I already
have my cause. If so, however, I have neither
eyes to see nor tongue to speak save as this
my highest cause commands. Now, what

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CONSCIENCE

does this my highest cause, loyalty to loyalty,
command? It commands simply but im
peratively that, since I must serve, and since,
at this critical moment, my only service must
take the form of a choice between loyalties,
I shall choose, even in my ignorance, what form
my service is henceforth to take. The point
where I am to make this choice is determined
by the obvious fact that, after a certain waiting
to find out whatever I can find out, I always
reach the moment when further indecision
would of itself constitute a sort of decision,
a decision, namely, to do nothing, and so not
to serve at all. Such a decision to do nothing,
my loyalty to loyalty forbids; and therefore
my principle clearly says to me after a fair
consideration of the case : Decide, knowingly
if you can, ignorantly if you must, but in any
case decide, and have no fear.

The duty of decisiveness as to one s loyalty
is thus founded upon considerations analogous
to those which Prof essor James has emphasized,
in speaking of certain problems about belief
in his justly famous essay on the Will to Be-

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

lieve. As soon as further indecision would
itself practically amount to a decision to do
nothing, and so would mean a failure to be
loyal to loyalty, then at once decide. This
is the only right act. If you cannot decide
knowingly, put your own personal will into the
matter, and thereupon decide ignorantly. For
ignorant service, which still knows itself as a
willing attempt to serve the cause of universal
loyalty, is better than a knowing refusal to
undertake any service whatever. The duty to
decide is, in such cases, just that upon which
our principle insists.

Decision, however, is meaningless unless it
is to be followed up by persistently active
loyalty. Having surrendered the self to the
chosen special cause, loyalty, precisely as
loyalty to loyalty, forbids you to destroy the
unity of your own purposes, and to set the
model of disloyalty before your fellows, by
turning back from the cause once chosen, unless
indeed later growth in knowledge makes mani
fest that further service of that special cause
would henceforth involve unquestionable dis-

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CONSCIENCE

loyalty to universal loyalty. Fidelity to the
cause once chosen is as obvious an aspect of a
thorough devotion of the self to the cause of
universal loyalty, as is decisiveness.

Only a growth in knowledge which makes it
evident that the special cause once chosen is an
unworthy cause, disloyal to universal loyalty, -
only such a growth in knowledge can absolve
from fidelity to the cause once chosen. In
brief, the choice of a special personal cause is
a sort of ethical marriage to this cause, with the
exception that the duty to choose some personal
cause is a duty for everybody, while marriage
is not everybody s duty. The marriage to
your cause is not to be dissolved unless it
becomes unquestionably evident that the con
tinuance of this marriage involves positive
unfaithfulness to the cause of universal loyalty.
But like any other marriage, the marriage of
each self to its chosen personal cause is made
in ignorance of the consequences. Decide,
then, in the critical case, and, "forsaking all
others, cleave to your own cause." Thus only
can you be loyal to loyalty.

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

If you once view the matter in this way, you
will not suppose that our principle would leave
either the future General Lee or our sup
posed young professional woman without guid
ance. It would say: Look first at the whole
situation. Consider it carefully. See, if pos
sible, whether you can predict the consequences
to the general loyalty which your act will in
volve. If, after such consideration, you still
remain ignorant of decisive facts, then look to
your highest loyalty; look steadfastly at the
cause of universal loyalty itself. Remember
how the loyal have always borne themselves.
Then, with your eyes and your voice put as
completely as may be at the service of that
cause, arouse all the loyal interests of your own
self, just as they now are, to their fullest vigor ;
and hereupon firmly and freely decide. Hence
forth, with all your mind and soul and strength
belong, fearlessly and faithfully, to the chosen
personal cause until the issue is decided, or
until you positively know that this cause can
no longer be served without disloyalty. So act,
and you are morally right.

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CONSCIENCE

Now, that is how Lee acted. And that, too,
is how all the loyal of our own Northern armies
acted. And to-day we know how there was
indeed loyalty to loyalty upon both sides,
and how all those thus loyal actually served
the one cause of the now united nation. They
loyally shed their blood, North and South,
that we might be free from their burden of
hatred and of horror. Precisely so should the
young woman of our ideal instance choose.
It is utterly vain for another to tell her which
she ought to choose, her profession or her
family. But it would be equally vain, and an
insult to loyalty, lightly to say to her : Do as
you please. One can say to her: Either of
these lives, the life of the successful servant
of a profession, or the life of the devoted sister
or aunt, either, if loyally lived, is indeed a
whole life. Nobody ought to ask for a more
blessed lot than is either of these lives, how
ever obscure the household drudgery of the
one may be, however hard beset by cares the
worldly success of the other may prove, or
however toilsome either of them in prospect is,

o 193

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

so long as either is faithfully lived out in
full devotion. For nobody has anything better
than loyalty, or can get anything better. But
one of them alone can you live. No mortal
knows which is the better for your world.
With all your heart, in the name of universal
loyalty, choose. And then be faithful to the
choice. So shall it be morally well with
you.

Now, if this view of the application of our
precept is right, you see how our principle is
just to that mysterious and personal aspect of
conscience upon which common sense insists.
Such a loyal choice as I have described de
mands, of course, one s will, one s conscious
decisiveness. It also calls out all of one s
personal and more or less unconsciously pres
ent instincts, interests, affections, one s socially
formed habits, and whatever else is woven into
the unity of each individual self. Loyalty,
as we have all along seen, is a willing devotion.
Since it is willing, it involves conscious choice.
Since it is devotion, it involves all the mysterv
of finding out that some cause awakens us,

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CONSCIENCE

fascinates us, reverberates through our whole
being, possesses us. It is a fact that critical
decisions as to the direction of our loyalty
can be determined by our own choice. It is
also a fact that loyalty involves more than mere
conscious choice. It involves that response of
our entire nature, conscious and unconscious,
which makes loyalty so precious. Now, this
response of the whole nature of the self, when
the result is a moral decision, is what common
sense has in mind when it views our moral de
cisions as due to our conscience, but our con
science as a mysterious higher or deeper self.
As a fact, the conscience is the ideal of the
self, coming to consciousness as a present com
mand. It says, Be loyal. If one asks, Loyal
to what? the conscience, awakened by our
whole personal response to the need of man
kind replies, Be loyal to loyalty. If, hereupon,
various loyalties seem to conflict, the conscience
says: Decide. If one asks, How decide?
conscience further urges, Decide as /, your
conscience, the ideal expression of your whole
personal nature, conscious and unconscious,

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

find best. If one persists, But you and I may
be wrong, the last word of conscience is,
We are fallible, but we can be decisive and faith
ful; and this is loyalty.

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SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS IN THEIR
RELATION TO LOYALTY

LECTURE V

SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS IN THEIR
RELATION TO LOYALTY

IN the philosophy of loyalty, whose general
statement has been contained in the fore
going lectures, I have made an effort to recon
cile the conception of loyalty with that of a
rational and moral individualism. To every
ethical individualist I have said: In loyalty
alone is the fulfilment of the reasonable pur
poses of your individualism. If you want
true freedom, seek it in loyalty. If you want j
self-expression, spirituality, moral autonomy,
loyalty alone can give you these goods. But
equally I have insisted upon interpreting loyalty
in terms that emphasize the significance of the
individual choice of that personal cause to
which one is to be loyal. This evening, as
I approach the application of our philosophy
of loyalty to some well-known American prob-

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

lems, it is important for us to bear in mind
from the outset this synthesis of individualism
and loyalty which constitutes our whole ethical
doctrine.

I

The traditional view of loyalty has associated
the term, in the minds of most of you, with
moral situations in which some external social
power predetermines for the individual, with
out his consent, all the causes to which he
ought to be loyal. Loyalty so conceived ap
pears to be opposed to individual liberty.
But in our philosophy of loyalty there is only
one cause which is rationally and absolutely
determined for the individual as the right cause
for him as for everybody, this is the general
cause defined by the phrase loyalty to loyalty.
The way in which any one man is to show his
loyalty to loyalty is, however, in our phi
losophy of loyalty, something which varies end
lessly with the individual, and which can never
be precisely defined except by and through his
personal consent. I can be loyal to loyalty
only in my own fashion, and by serving my

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SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS

own special personal system of causes. How
wide a range of moral freedom of conscience
this fact gives me, we began at the last time
to see. In order to make that fact still clearer,
let me sum up our moral code afresh, and in
another order than the one used at the last
time.

As our philosophy of loyalty states the case,
the moral law is: (1) be loyal; (2) to that
end have a special cause or a system of
causes which shall constitute your personal
object of loyalty, your business in life; (3)
choose this cause, in the first place, for your
self, but decisively, and so far as the general
principle of loyalty permits, remain faithful
to this chosen cause, until the work that you
can do for it is done; and (4) the general
principle of loyalty to which all special choices
of one s cause are subject, is the principle:
Be loyal to loyalty, that is, do what you can
to produce a maximum of the devoted ser
vice of causes, a maximum of fidelity, and of
selves that choose and serve fitting objects of

loyalty.

201

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

From the point of view of this statement of
the moral law, we are all in the wrong in case
we have no cause whatever to which we are
loyal. If you are an individualist in the sense
that you are loyal to nothing, you are certainly
false to your duty. Furthermore, in order
that you should be loyal at all, the cause to
which you are loyal must involve the union of
various persons by means of some social tie,
which has in some respects an impersonal or
superindividual character, as well as a distinct
personal interest for each of the persons con
cerned.

On the other hand, my statement of the
moral principle gives to us all an extremely
limited right to judge what the causes are to
which any one of our neighbors ought to devote
himself. Having defined loyalty as I have
done as a devotion to a cause, outside the pri
vate self, and yet chosen by this individual
self as his cause; having pointed out the
general nature which such a cause must possess
in order to be worthy, namely, having shown
that it must involve the mentioned union of

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SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS

personal and impersonal interests; having,
furthermore, asserted that all rightly chosen
loyalty is guided by the intent not to enter into
any unnecessary destruction of the loyalty of
others, but is inspired by loyalty to loyalty,
and so seeks, as best the loyal individual can,
to further loyalty as a common good for all
mankind, having said so much, I must, from
my point of view, leave to the individual the
decision as to the choice of the cause or causes
to which he is loyal, subject only to these
mentioned conditions. I have very little right
to judge, except by the most unmistakable
expression of my fellow s purpose, whether he
is actually loyal, in the sense of my definition,
or not.

I may say of a given person that I do not
understand to what cause he is loyal. But I
can assert that he is disloyal only when I know
what cause it is to which he has committed
himself, and what it is that he has done to be
false to his chosen fidelity. Or again, I can
judge that he lacks loyalty if he makes it per
fectly evident by his acts or by his own con-

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

fessions that he has chosen no cause at all.
If he is unquestionably loyal to something, to
his country or to his profession or to his
family, I may criticise his expression of loyalty,
in so far as I clearly see that it involves him in
unnecessary assault upon the loyalty of others,
or upon their means to be loyal. Thus, all
unnecessary personal aggression upon what we
commonly call the rights of other individuals
are excluded by my formula, simply because
in case I deprive my fellow of his property,
his life, or his physical integrity, I take away
from him the only means whereby he can ex
press in a practical way whatever loyalty he
has. Hence such aggression, unless necessary,
involves disloyalty to the general loyalty of
mankind, is a crime against humanity at large,
and is inconsistent with any form of loyalty.
Such is the range of judgment that we have a
right to use in our moral estimates of other
people. The range thus indicated is, as I
have insisted, large enough to enable us to
define all rationally defensible special prin
ciples regarding right and wrong acts. Mur-

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SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS

der, lying, evil speaking, unkindness, are
from this point of view simply forms of dis
loyalty.

But my right to judge the choices of my
fellow is thus very sharply limited. I cannot
say that he is disloyal because his personal
cause is not my cause, or because I have no
sympathy with the objects to which he devotes
himself. I have no right to call him disloyal
because I should find that if I were to do what
he does, I should indeed be disloyal to causes
that I accept. I may not judge a man to be
without an object of loyalty merely because
I do not understand what the object is with
which he busies himself. I may regard his
cause as too narrow, if I clearly see that he
could do better service than he does to the
cause of universal loyalty. But when I ob
serve how much even the plainest and humblest
of the loyal sometimes unconsciously do to help
others to profit by the contagion of their own
loyalty, by the example of their faithfulness,
I must be cautious about judging another
man s cause to be too narrow. You cannot

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

easily set limits to the occupations that the sin
cere choice of somebody will make expressions
of genuine loyalty. The loyal individual may
live largely alone; or mainly in company. His
life may be spent in the office or in the study
or in the workshop or in the field; in arctic
exploration, in philanthropy, in a laboratory.
And yet the true form and spirit of loyalty,
and of loyalty to loyalty, when once you get
an actual understanding of the purposes of the
self that is in question, is universal and un
mistakable.

I hesitate, therefore, to decide for another
person even such a question as the way in which
his most natural and obvious opportunities
for loyalty shall be used. It is true that nature
furnishes to us all opportunities for loyalty
which it seems absurd to neglect. Charity,
as they say, begins at home. Still more obvi
ously does loyalty naturally begin at home.
People who wholly neglect their natural family
ties often thereby make probable that they are
disloyal people. Yet the well-known word
about hating father and mother in the service

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SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS

of a universal cause paradoxically states a
possibility to which the history of the early
Christian martyrs more than once gave an
actual embodiment. If the martyr might
break loose from all family ties in his loyal ser
vice of his faith, one cannot attempt to deter
mine for another person at just what point the
neglect of a naturally present opportunity for
loyalty becomes an inevitable incident of the
choice of loyalty that one has made. Nature,
after all, furnishes us merely our opportuni
ties to be loyal. Some of these must be used.
None of them may be so ignored that thereby
we deliberately increase the disloyalty of
mankind. But the individual retains the
inalienable duty, which nobody, not even his
most pious critical neighbor, can either perform
or wholly judge for him, the duty to decide
wherein his own loyalty lies. Yet the duty to
be loyal to loyalty is absolutely universal and
rigid.

As we also saw at the last time, since fidelity
and loyalty are indeed inseparable, the break
ing of the once plighted faith is always a dis-

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

loyal act, unless the discovery that the original
undertaking involves one in disloyalty to the
general cause of loyalty requires the change.
Thus, indeed, the once awakened and so far
loyal member of the robber band would be
bound by his newly discovered loyalty to hu
manity in general, to break his oath to the
band. But even in such a case, he would still
owe to his comrades of the former service a
kind of fidelity which he would not have owed
had he never been a member of the band. His
duty to his former comrades would change
through his new insight. But he could never
ignore his former loyalty, and would never be
absolved from the peculiar obligation to his
former comrades, the obligation to help them
all to a higher service of humanity than they
had so far attained.

You see, from this point of view, how the
requirements of the spirit of loyalty are in one
sense perfectly stern and unyielding, while
in another sense they are and must be capable
of great freedom of interpretation. In judg
ing myself, in deciding how I can best be loyal

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SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS

to loyalty, in deciding what special causes they
are through which I am to express my loyalty,
in judging whether my act is justified by my
loyalty, in all these respects I must be with
myself, at least in principle, entirely rigid. As
I grow in knowledge, I shall better learn how
to be loyal. I shall learn to serve new causes,
to recover from vain attempts at a service of
which I was incapable, and in general to be
come a better servant of the cause. But at
each point of my choice my obligation to be
loyal, to have a cause, to have for the purposes
of voluntary conduct no eyes and ears and voice
save as this cause directs, this obligation is
absolute. I cannot excuse myself from it with
out being false to my own purpose. I may
sleep or be slothful, but precisely in so far as
such relaxation fits me for work. I may
amuse myself, but because amusement is
again a necessary preliminary to or accompani
ment of loyal service. I may seek my private
advantage, but only in so far as, since I am an
instrument of my cause, it is indeed my duty,
and is consistent with my loyalty, to furnish to
p 209

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

the cause an effective instrument. But the
general principle remains: Working or idle,
asleep or awake, joyous or sorrowful, thoughtful
or apparently careless, at critical moments, or
when engaged in the most mechanical routine,
in so far as my will can determine what I am,
I must be whatever my loyalty requires me to
be. And in so far my voluntary life is from
my point of view a topic for judgments which
are in principle perfectly determinate.

Profoundly different must be my judgment
in case of my estimate of the loyalty of my
fellow. The tasks of mankind are not only
common but also individual. So long as you
are sure of your own loyalty, and do not break
your trust, I cannot judge that you are actually
disloyal. I can only judge in some respects
whether your loyalty is or is not enlightened,
is or is not successful, is or is not in unneces
sary conflict with the loyalty of others. I have
to be extremely wary of deciding what the
loyalty of others demands of them. But this
I certainly know, that if a man has made no
choice for himself of the cause that he serves,

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SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS

he is not yet come to his rational self, he has
not yet found his business as a moral agent.

II

Such are our general results regarding the
nature of loyalty as an ethical principle. This
complete synthesis of loyalty with a rational
individualism must be borne in mind as
we attempt a certain practical application of
these principles to the problem of our present
American life. If there is any truth in the
foregoing, then our concept especially helps
us in trying to define what it is that we most
need in the social life of a democracy, and what
means we have of doing something to satisfy
the moral needs of our American community,
while leaving the liberties of the people intact.

Liberty without loyalty of what worth, if
the foregoing principles are sound, could such
liberty be to any people? And yet, if you
recall the protest of my young friend, the Rus
sian immigrant s son, as cited to you in a for
mer lecture, you will be reminded of the great
task that now lies before our American people,

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

the task of teaching millions of foreign birth
and descent to understand and to bear con
stantly in mind the value of loyalty, the
task also of keeping our own loyalty intact
in the presence of those enormous complica
tions of social life which the vastness of our
country, and the numbers of our foreign immi
grants are constantly increasing. The prob
lem here in question is not merely the problem
of giving instruction in the duties of citizenship
to those to whom our country is new, nor yet of
awakening and preserving patriotism. It is the
problem of keeping alive what we now know
to be the central principle of the moral life in
a population which is constantly being altered
by new arrivals, and unsettled by great social
changes.

If you recall what was said in our former
lecture regarding modern individualism in
general, you will also see that our American
immigration problem is only one aspect of a
world-wide need of moral enlightenment,
a need characteristic of our time. One is
tempted to adapt Lincoln s great words, and

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SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS

to say that in all nations, but particularly in
America, we need in this day to work together
to the end that loyalty of the people, by the
people, and for the people shall not perish from
the earth.

It is not, indeed, that loyal people no longer
are frequent amongst us. The faithful who
live and die in loyalty so far as they know
loyalty are indeed not yet uncommon. The
loyalty of the common people is precisely the
most precious moral treasure of our world.
But the moral dangers of our American civil
ization are twofold. First, loyalty is not suf
ficiently prominent amongst our explicit social
ideals in America. It is too much left to the
true-hearted obscure people. It is not suffi
ciently emphasized. Our popular literature
too often ignores it or misrepresents it. This
is one danger, since it means that loyalty is too
often discouraged and confused, instead of
glorified and honored. In the long run, if not
checked, this tendency must lead to a great
decrease of loyalty. The second danger lies in
the fact that when loyalty is indeed emphasized

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

and glorified, it is then far too seldom conceived
as rationally involving loyalty to universal loy
alty. Hence we all think too often of loyalty
as a warlike and intolerant virtue, and not as
the spirit of universal peace. Enlightened loy
alty, as we have now learned, means harm to no
man s loyalty. It is at war only with disloy
alty, and its warfare, unless necessity con
strains, is only a spiritual warfare. It does
not foster class hatreds ; it knows of nothing
reasonable about race prejudices, and it regards
all races of men as one in their need of loyalty.
It ignores mutual misunderstandings. It loves
its own wherever upon earth its own, namely,
loyalty itself, is to be found. Enlightened loy
alty takes no delight in great armies or in great
navies for their own sake. If it consents to
them, it views them merely as transiently nec
essary calamities. It has no joy in national
prowess, except in so far as that prowess means
a furtherance of universal loyalty. And it re
gards the war-spirit, which in our first lecture
we used as an example of loyalty, it regards
this spirit, I say, as at its best an outcome of

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SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS

necessity or else of unenlightened loyalty, and
as at its worst one of the basest of disloyalties
to universal loyalty.

Now, it is precisely this enlightened form of
loyalty, this conception of loyalty to loyalty,
which we most need to have taught to our
American people, taught openly, explicitly,
-yet not taught, for the most part, by the
now too familiar method of fascinating denun
ciations of the wicked, nor by the mere display
of force, social or political, nor by the setting
of class against class, nor yet by any glorifica
tion of mere power, nor by appeals merely to
patriotic but confused fervor. We want loyalty
to loyalty taught by helping many people to be
loyal to their own special causes, and by show
ing them that loyalty is a precious common
human good, and that it can never be a good
to harm any man s loyalty except solely in
necessary defence of our own loyalty.

Ill

From the point of view of the foregoing dis
cussion, if you want to do the best you can to

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

teach loyalty, not now to single individuals, but
to great masses of people, masses such as our
whole nation, you should do three things :
(1) You should aid them to possess and to keep
those physical and mental powers and posses
sions which are the necessary conditions for
the exercise of loyalty. (2) You should pro
vide them with manifold opportunities to be
loyal, that is, with a maximum of significant,
rational enterprises, such as can be loyally
carried out; you should, if possible, secure
for them a minimum of the conditions that
lead to the conflicts of various forms of loyalty ;
and you should furnish them a variety of oppor
tunities to get social experience of the value of
loyalty. (3) You should explicitly show them
that loyalty is the best of human goods, and
that loyalty to loyalty is the crown and the real
meaning of all loyalty.

Helping the people to the attainment and
preservation of their powers obviously involves
the sort of care of public health, the sort of
general training of intelligence, the sort of
protection and assistance, which our philan-

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SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS

thropists and teachers and public-spirited peo
ple generally regard as important. There is
no doubt that in our modern American life our
social order does give to great numbers of
people care and assistance and protection,
such as earlier stages of civilization lacked.
But the other side of the task of providing
our people with the means of ethical advance
ment, the side that has to do with letting them
know what loyalty is, and with giving them
opportunities to be loyal, this side, I say, of
what we ought to do to further the moral prog
ress of our people, is at present very imper
fectly accomplished.

With prosperity, as we may well admit, sym
pathy, benevolence, public spirit, even the
more rational philanthropy which seeks not
merely to relieve suffering, but to improve the
effective powers of those whom we try to help,
-all these things have become, in recent
decades, more and more prominent on the
better side of our civilization. And yet I
insist, just as prosperity is not virtue, and just
as power is not morality, so too even public

217

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

charity, and even the disposition to train peo
ple, to make them more intelligent, to give
them new power, all such dispositions are in
sufficient to insure the right moral training of
our people, or the effective furtherance of ideal
life amongst them.

What men need involves opportunity for
loyalty. And such opportunity they get, espe
cially through the suggestion of objects to
which they can be loyal. If you want to train
a man to a good life, you must indeed do what
you can to give him health and power. And
you do something for him when, by example
and by precept, you encourage him to be sym
pathetic, public-spirited, amiable, or industri
ous. But benevolence, sympathy, what some
people love to call altruism, these are all mere
fragments of goodness, mere aspects of the
dutiful life. What is needed is loyalty. Mean
while, since loyalty is so plastic a virtue, since
the choice of the objects of loyalty must vary so
widely from individual to individual, and since,
above all, you can never force anybody to be
loyal, but can only show him opportunities

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SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS

for loyalty, and teach him by example and pre
cept what loyalty is, the great need of any
higher civilization is a vast variety of oppor
tunities for individual loyalty, and of sugges
tion regarding what forms of loyalty are possi
ble.

Now, I need not for a moment ignore the
fact that every higher civilization, and of course
our own, presents to any intelligent person nu
merous opportunities to be loyal. But what
I must point out in our present American life is,
that our opportunities for loyalty are not
rightly brought to our consciousness by the
conditions of our civilization, so that a great
mass of our people are far too little reminded
of what chances for loyalty they themselves
have, or of what loyalty is. Meanwhile our
national prosperity and our national greatness
involve us all in many new temptations to
disloyalty, and distract our minds too much
from dwelling upon the loyal side of life; so
that at the very moment when our philanthropy
is growing, when our sympathies are con
stantly aroused through the press, the drama,

219

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

and our sensitive social life generally, our
training in loyalty is falling away. Our young
people grow up with a great deal of their
attention fixed upon personal success, and also
with a great deal of training in sympathetic
sentiments; but they get far too little knowl
edge, either practical or theoretical, of what
loyalty means.

IV

The first natural opportunity for loyalty is
furnished by family ties. We all know how
some of the conditions of our civilization tend
with great masses of our population to a new
interpretation of family ties in which family
loyalty often plays a much less part than it
formerly did in family life. Since our mod
ern family is less patriarchal than it used to be,
our children, trained in an individualistic
spirit, frequently make little of certain duties
to their parents which the ancient family re
garded as imperative and exalted as ideal.
Many of us deliberately prefer the loss of cer
tain results of the patriarchal family tie, and

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SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS

are glad that in the modern American family
the parental decisions regarding the marriage
choices of children are so much less decisive
than they used to be. Many insist that other
weakenings of the family tie, such as divorce
legislation and the practice of divorce have
involved, are in the direction of a reasonable
recognition of individual interests.

I will not try to discuss these matters at
length. But this I can say without hesitation :
The family ties, so far as they are natural,
are opportunities for loyalty; so far as they
are deliberately chosen or recognized, are in
stances of the choice of a loyalty. From our
point of view, therefore, they must be judged as
all other opportunities and forms of loyalty are
judged. That such opportunities and forms
alter their character as civilization changes is
inevitable, and need be no matter for super
stitious cares regarding whatever was arbitrary
in traditional views of family authority. But,
after all, fidelity and family devotion are
amongst the most precious opportunities and
instances of loyalty. Faithlessness can never

221

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

become a virtue, however your traditions about
the forms of faithfulness may vary in their
external details. Whoever deliberately breaks
the tie to which he is devoted loses the oppor
tunity and the position of the loyal self, and in
so far loses the best sort of thing that there is in
the moral world. No fondness for individual
ism will ever do away with this fact. We want
more individuals and more rational individ
ualism ; but the only possible ethical use of an
individual is to be loyal. He has no other
destiny.

When a man feels his present ties to be
arbitrary or to be a mechanical bondage, he
sometimes says that it is irrational to be a
mere spoke in a wheel. Now, a loyal self is
always more than a spoke in a wheel. But
still, at the worst, it is better to be a spoke in
the wheel than a spoke out of the wheel. And
you never make ethical individuals, or enlarge
their opportunities, merely by breaking ties.
Hence, so far as a change in family tradition
actually involves a loss of opportunities and
forms of loyalty, which tradition used to

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SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS

emphasize, our new social order has lost a
good thing. Do we see at present just what
is taking its place ? If the patriarchal family
must pass away or be profoundly altered,
surely we should not gain thereby unless there
were to result a new family type, as rich in
appeal to our human affections and our do
mestic instincts as the old forms ever were.

But in our present American life the family
tie has been weakened, and yet no substitute
has been found. We have so far lost certain
opportunities for loyalty.

Now, how shall we hope to win back these
opportunities ? I answer : We can win back
something of what we have lost if only we in this
country can get before ourselves and our pub
lic a new, a transformed conception of what
loyalty is. The loyalties of the past have lost
their meaning for many people, simply because
people have confounded loyalty with mere
bondage to tradition, or with mere surrender
of individual rights and preferences. Such
people have forgotten that what has made
loyalty a good has never been the convention

223

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

which undertook to enforce it, but has always
been the spiritual dignity which lies in being
loyal.

As to individual rights and preferences, no
body can ever attain either the one or the other,
in full measure, apart from loyalty to the clos
est and the most lasting ties which the life of
the individual in question is capable of accept
ing with hearty willingness. Ties once loyally
accepted may be broken in case, but only in
case, the further keeping of those ties intact
involves disloyalty to the universal cause of
loyalty. When such reason for breaking ties
exists, to break them becomes a duty; and
then, indeed, a merely conventional persist
ence in what has become a false position, is
itself a disloyal deed. But ties may never be
broken except for the sake of other and still
stronger ties. No one may rationally say:
"Loyalty can no longer bind me, because,
from my deepest soul, I feel that I want my
individual freedom." For any such outcry
comes from an ignorance of what one s deep
est soul really wants.

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SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS

Disloyalty is moral suicide. Many a poor
human creature outlives all that, in the present
life, can constitute his true self, outlives as
a mere psychological specimen any human
expression of his moral personality, and does
so because he has failed to observe that his
loyalty, so far and so long as it has been his own,
has been the very heart of this moral personality.
When loyalty has once been fully aroused,
and has then not merely blundered but died,
there may, indeed, remain much fluttering
eagerness of life; as if a stranded ship s torn
canvas were still flapping in the wind. But
there cannot remain freedom of personal exist
ence. For the moral personality that once
was loyal, and that then blindly sought free
dom, is, to human vision, dead. What is, in
such a case, left of the so-called life is merely
an obituary. Curious people of prominence
have sometimes expressed a wish to read their
own obituaries. But it is hardly worth while
to live them.

People sometimes fail to observe this fact,
partly because they conceive loyalty as some-

Q 225

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

thing which convention forces upon the indi
vidual, and partly because they also conceive
loyalty, where it exists, as merely a relation
of one individual to other individuals. Both
views, as we now know, are wrong. No con
vention can predetermine my personal loyalty
without my free consent. But then, if I
loyally consent, I mean to be faithful; I give
myself; I am henceforth the self thus given
over to the cause ; and therefore essential un
faithfulness is, for me, moral suicide. Mean
while, however, no mere individual can ever
be my whole object of loyalty; for to another
individual human being I can only say, "So
far as in me lies I will be loyal to our tie, to our
cause, to our union." For this reason the
loyal are never the mere slaves of convention ;
and, on the other hand, they can never say
one to another, "Since we have now grown
more or less tired of one another, our loyalty
ceases." To tire of the cause to which my
whole self is once for all committed, is indeed
to tire of being my moral self. I cannot win
my freedom in that way. And no individual,

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SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS

as individual, ever has been, or ever can be,
my whole cause. My cause has always been
a tie, an union of various individuals in one.

Now, can our American people learn this
lesson in so far as this lesson is illustrated by
family ties ? Can they come to see that loyalty
does not mean the bondage of one individual
to another, but does mean the exaltation of
individuals to the rank of true personalities
by virtue of their free acceptance of enduring
causes, and by virtue of their lifelong service
of their common personal ties ? If this lesson
can be learned by those serious-minded peo
ple who have been misled, in recent times,
by a false form of individualism, then we shall
indeed not get rid of our moral problems, but
we shall vastly simplify our moral situation.
And a rational individualism will still remain
our possession. How to treat the disloyal
remains indeed a serious practical problem.
But we shall never learn to deal with that
problem if we suppose that the one cure for
disloyalty, or the one revenge which we can
take upon the disloyal, lies in a new act of

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

disloyalty, that is, in the mere assertion of
our individual freedom. Train our people
to know the essential preciousness of loyalty.
In that way only can you hope to restore to the
family, not, indeed, all of its older conven
tional forms, but its true dignity. The prob
lem, then, of the salvation of the family life
of our nation resolves itself into the general
problem of how to train our people at large
into loyalty to loyalty.

The second great opportunity for loyalty is
furnished, to the great mass of our people,
by their relations to our various political powers
and institutions, and to our larger social or
ganizations generally. And here we meet, in
the America of to-day, with many signs that
our political and social life form at present a
poor school in the arts of loyalty to loyalty.

Loyalty, indeed, as I have repeatedly said,
we still have present all about us. The pre
cious plain and obscure people, who are loyal
to whatever they understand to be worthy

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SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS

causes, and, on the other hand, those promi
nent and voluntary public servants, who in so
many cases are our leaders in good works,
these we have so far still with us. And new
forms of loyalty constantly appear in our so
cial life. Reform movements, trades-unions,
religious sects, partisan organizations, both good
and evil, arouse in various ways the loyalty of
great numbers of people. Yet these special
loyalties do not get rightly organized in such
form as to further loyalty to loyalty. Narrow
loyalties, side by side with irrational forms
of individualism and with a cynical contempt
for all loyalty, these are what we too often
see in the life of our country. For where the
special loyalties are, amongst our people, most
developed, they far too often take the form of
a loyalty to mutually hostile partisan organiza
tions, or to sects, or to social classes, at the
expense of loyalty to the community or to the
whole country. The labor-unions demand and
cultivate the loyalty of their members ; but
they do so with a far too frequent emphasis
upon the thesis that in order to be loyal to his

229

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

own social class, or, in particular, to his union,
the laborer must disregard certain duties to the
community at large, and to the nation, du
ties which loyalty to loyalty seems obviously
to require. And party loyalty comes to be
misused by corrupt politicians to the harm of
the state. Therefore loyalty to special organi
zations such as labor-unions comes to be mis
directed by such leaders as are disloyal, until
the welfare of the whole social order is en
dangered.

The result is that the very spirit of loyalty
itself has come to be regarded with suspicion
by many of our social critics, and by many such
partisans of ethical individualism as those whose
various views we studied in our second lecture.
Yet surely if such ethical individualists, ob
jecting to the mischiefs wrought by the cor
rupt politicians, or by the more unwise leaders
of organized labor, imagine that loyalty is
responsible for these evils, such critics have
only to turn to the recent history of corporate
misdeeds and of the unwise mismanagement
of corporations in this country, in order to be

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SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS

reminded that what we want, at present, from
some of the managers of great corporate inter
ests is more loyalty, and less of the individual
ism of those who seek power. And I myself
should say that precisely the same sort of
loyalty is what we want both from the leaders
and from the followers of organized labor.
There is here one law for all.

Meanwhile, in case of the ill-advised labor
agitations, and of the corrupt party manage
ment, the cure, if it ever comes, surely will
include cultivating amongst our people the
spirit of loyalty to loyalty. Loyalty in itself
is never an evil. The arbitrary interference
with other men s loyalties, the disloyalty to
the universal cause of loyalty, is what does
the mischief here in question. The more the
laborer is loyal to his union, if only he learns
to conceive this loyalty as an instance of
loyalty to loyalty, the more likely is his union
to become, in the end, an instrument for social
harmony, and not, as is now too often the case,
an influence for oppression and for social dis
organization. The loyalty which the trades-

231

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

unions demand of their members is at present
too often viewed as a mere class loyalty, and
also as opposed to the individual freedom of
choice on the part of those laborers who do not
belong to a given union, or even to those who
are in the union, but whose right choice and
interests are sometimes hindered by their own
union itself. But our people must learn that
loyalty does not mean hostility to another
man s loyalty. Loyalty is for all men, kings
and laborers alike ; and whenever we learn to
recognize that fact, loyalty will no longer mean
fraternal strife, and will no longer excuse
treason to the country for the sake of fidelity
to corrupt leaders or to mischievous agita
tions.

VI

But you may hereupon ask how the masses
of our people are to learn such a lesson of
loyalty to loyalty. I admit that the problem
of teaching our people what the larger loyalty
means is at present peculiarly difficult. And
it is rendered all the more difficult by the fact

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SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS

that, for us Americans, loyalty to our nation,
as a whole, is a sentiment that we find to be at
present by no means as prominent in the minds
of our people as such sentiments have been in
the past in other nations. Let me explain
what I mean by this assertion.

The history of our sentiment towards our
national government is somewhat different from
the history of the sentiment of patriotism in
other countries. We have never had a king as
the symbol of our national dignity and unity.
We have, on the other hand, never had to war
against a privileged class. Our constitutional
problem which led to the Civil War was a
different problem from that which the French
Revolution, or the English political wars of the
seventeenth century, have exemplified. At
one time loyalty to the nation stood, in the
minds of many of our people, in strong contrast
to their loyalty to their state, or to their section
of the country. This contrast led in many
cases to a bitter conflict between the two sorts
of loyal interests. At last such conflicts had
to be decided by war. The result of the war

233

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

was such that, from one point of view, the
national government and the authority of the
nation, as a whole, have won a position that
is at present politically unquestionable. The
supremacy of the national government in its
own sphere is well recognized. Within its
legal limits, its power is popularly regarded
as irresistible. The appearance of its soldiers
at any moment of popular tumult is well known
to be the most effective expression of public
authority which we have at our disposal, even
although the body of soldiers which may be
accessible for such a show of force happens to
be a very small body. Viewed, then, as a legal
authority and as a physical force, our national
government occupies at present a peculiarly
secure position. And so, the President of
the United States is, at any moment, more
powerful than almost any living monarch. All
this, viewed as the outcome of our long con
stitutional struggle, would seem of itself to sug
gest that the American people have become
essentially loyal to our national government.
But, nevertheless, is this quite true? I

234

SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS

think that almost any thoughtful American has
to admit that in time of peace we do not regard
our national government with any such intense
sentiments of loyalty as would seem from report
to be the living, the vital, the constant posses
sion of Japanese patriots when they consider
their traditional devotion to the nation and to
their emperor. For them their country is
part of a religion. In their consciousness it is
said especially to be the land sacred to the
memory of their dead. The living, as they
say, are but of to-day. The dead they have
always with them in memory, even if not in the
determinate form of any fixed belief with re
gard to the precise nature of the life beyond
the grave. It is said that the Japanese are
verv free as to the formulation of all their
religious opinions. But in any case their
religion includes a reverence for the historic
past, a devotion to the dead whose memory
makes their country sacred, and a present
loyalty which is consciously determined by
these religious motives.

Now, the most patriotic American can hardly

235

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

pretend that he consciously views his country,
taken as a whole, in any such religious way.
The country is to us an unquestionable political
authority. Were it in danger, we should rally
to its defence. We have a good many formal
phrases of reverence for its history and for its
dignity, phrases which had a much more
concrete meaning for our predecessors, when
the country was smaller, or when the country
was in greater danger from its foes. But, at
present, is not our national loyalty somewhat
in the background of our practical conscious
ness ? Are we really at present a highly
patriotic people ? Certainly, the observer of
a presidential canvass can hardly think of that
canvass as a religious function, or believe that
a profound reverence for the sacred memory
of the fathers is at present a very prominent
factor in determining our choice of the party
for which we shall vote at the polls.

And if you say that political dissensions are
always of such a nature as to hide for the
moment patriotism behind a mist of present
perplexities, you may well be asked in reply

236

SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS

whether anywhere else, outside of political
dissensions, we have in our national life func
tions, ceremonies, expressions of practical de
votion to our nation as an ideal, which serve
to keep our loyalty to our country sufficiently
alive, and sufficiently a factor in our lives.
When can the ordinary American citizen
say in time of peace that he performs notable
acts of devotion to his country, such that he
could describe those acts in the terms that the
Speaker of the House of Commons used, in
the story that I reported to you in my former
lecture? In other words, how often, in your
own present life, or in the lives of your fellow-
citizens, as now you know them, is it the case
that you do something critical, significant, in
volving personal risk or sacrifice to yourself,
and something which is meanwhile so inspired
by your love of your nation as a whole that
you can say that just then you have neither
eyes to see nor tongue to speak save as the
country itself, in your opinion, requires you
to see and to speak ?

Now, all this state of things is opposed to

237

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

our easily forming a conception of what
loyalty to loyalty demands of us in our social
and political relations. But the faults in
question are not peculiar to our American
people. They seem to my mind to be merely
symptomatic of something which naturally be
longs to the general type of civilization upon
which, in our national history, we are entering.
The philosopher Hegel, in one of his works
on the philosophy of history, depicts a type
of civilization, which, in his mind, was espe
cially associated with the decline and fall of
the Roman Empire, as well as with the polit
ical absolutism of the seventeenth and of the
early eighteenth centuries in modern Europe.
This type itself was conceived by him as a
general one, such that it might be realized in
very various ages and civilizations. Hegel
called this type of social consciousness the
type of the social mind, or of the "Spirit,"
that had become, as he said, "estranged
from itself." Let me explain what Hegel
meant by this phrase.

A social consciousness can be of the pro-

238

SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS

vincial type ; that is, of the type which be
longs to small commonwealths or to provinces,
such as our own thirteen colonies once were.
Or, on the other hand, the social life can be that
of the great nation, which is so vast that the
individuals concerned no longer recognize
their social unity in ways which seem to them
homelike. In the province the social mind is
naturally aware of itself as at home with its
own. In the Roman Empire, or in the state
of Louis XIV, nobody is at home. The gov
ernment in such vast social orders represents
the law, a dictation that the individual finds
relatively strange to himself. Or, again, the
power of the state, even when it is attractive
to the individual, still seems to him like a
great nature force, rather than like his own
loyal self, writ large. The world of the
"self -estranged social mind" of Hegel s defi
nition we might, to use a current phrase
ology, characterize as the world of the impe
rialistic sort of national consciousness, or
simply as the world of imperialism. In such
a world, as Hegel skilfully points out, the

239

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

individual comes to regard himself as in rela
tion to the social powers, which, in the first
place, he cannot understand. The fact that,
as in our present civilization, he is formally a
free citizen, does not remove his character of
self-estrangement from the social world in
which he moves. Furthermore, since such
a society is so vast as to be no longer easily
intelligible, not only its political, but also its
other social powers, appear to the individual
in a similarly estranged and arbitrary fashion.
In Hegel s account stress is laid upon the in
evitable conflicts between wealth and govern
mental authority, between corporate and polit
ical dignities, conflicts which characterize
the imperial stage of civilization in question.
In the world of the "self -estranged social
mind," loyalty passes into the background,
or tends to disappear altogether. The in
dividual seeks his own. He submits to major
force. Perhaps he finds such submission
welcome, if it secures him safety in the acqui
sition of private gain, or of stately social posi
tion. But welcome or unwelcome, the author-

240

SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS

ity to which he submits, be it the authority
of the government or the authority which
wealth and the great aggregations of capital
imply, is for him just the fact, not a matter
for loyalty.

Such a formula as the one which Hegel
suggests is always inadequate to the wealth of
life. But we are able to understand our
national position better when we see that our
nation has entered in these days into the realm
of the "self -estranged spirit," into the social
realm where the distant and irresistible national
government, however welcome its authority
may be, is at best rather a guarantee of safety,
an object for political contest, and a force
with which everybody must reckon, than the
opportunity for such loyalty, as our distinctly
provincial fathers used to feel and express in
their early utterances of the national spirit.
In the same way in this world of the self-
estranged spirit, the other forces of society
arouse our curiosity, interest us intensely,
must be reckoned with, and may be used more
or less wisely to our advantage. But they are

R 241

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

the great industrial forces, the aggregations
of capital, the combinations of enormous
physical power, employed for various social
ends. These vast social forces are like the
forces of nature. They excite our loyalty as
little as do the trade-winds or the blizzard.
They leave our patriotic sentiments cold.
The smoke of our civilization hides the very
heavens that used to be so near, and the stars
to which we were once loyal. The conse
quences of such social conditions are in part
inevitable. I am not planning any social
reform which would wholly do away with
these conditions of the world of the self-
estranged spirit. But these conditions of our
national social order do not make loyalty to
loyalty a less significant need. They only
deprive us of certain formerly accessible op
portunities for such loyalty. They lead us
to take refuge in our unpatriotic sects, par
tisan organizations, and unions. But they
make it necessary that we should try to see
how, under conditions as they are, we can
best foster loyalty in its higher forms, not by

242

SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS

destroying the sects or the unions, but by
inspiring them with a new loyalty to loyalty.

As the nation has in so many respects be
come estranged from our more intimate con
sciousness, we have lost a portion of what, in
the days before the war, used to absorb the
loyalty of a large proportion of our country
men. I speak here of loyalty to the separate
states and to the various provinces of our
country. Such provincial loyalty still exists,
but it has no longer the power that it possessed
when it was able to bring on civil war, and
very nearly to destroy the national unity.
Instead of dangerous sectionalism, we now
have the other dangerous tendency towards
a war of classes, which the labor-unions and
many other symptoms of social discontent em
phasize. We have that corrupt political life
which partisan mismanagement exemplifies.
And we have that total indifference to all forms
of loyalty which our seekers after individual
power sometimes exhibit, and which occasion
ally appears as so serious an evil in the conduct
of the business of certain great corporations.

243

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

All these, I insist, are in our present Ameri
can life symptoms of the state of the self-
estranged spirit. The decline of family loy
alty, of which I spoke a while since, may be
regarded as another symptom of the same
general tendency. Loyalty itself, under such
conditions, remains too often unconscious of
its true office. Instead of developing into the
true loyalty to loyalty, it fails to recognize its
own in the vast world of national affairs. It
is dazzled by the show of power. It limits its
devotion to the service of the political party,
or of the labor-union, or of some other sec
tarian social organization. In private life, as
we have seen, it too often loses control of the
family. In public life it appears either as the
service of a faction, or as a vague fondness for
the remote ideals.

VII

And nevertheless, as I insist, loyalty to
loyalty is not a vague ideal. The spirit of
loyalty is practical, is simple, is teachable, and
is for all normal men. And in order to train
loyalty to loyalty in a great mass of the people,

244

SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS

what is most of all needed is to help them to be
less estranged than they are from their own
social order.

To sum up, then, this too lengthy review,
the problem of the training of our American
people as a whole to a larger and richer social
loyalty is the problem of educating the self-
estranged spirit of our nation to know itself
better. And now that we have the problem
before us, what solution can we offer?

The question of what methods a training
for loyalty should follow, is the special prob
lem of our next lecture. But there is indeed
one proposal, looking towards a better train
ing of our nation to loyalty, which I have here
to make as I close this statement of our na
tional needs. The proposal is this. We need
and we are beginning to get, in this country,
a new and wiser provincialism. I mean by
such provincialism no mere renewal of the
old sectionalism. I mean the sort of pro
vincialism which makes people want to ideal
ize, to adorn, to ennoble, to educate, their
own province; to hold sacred its traditions, to

245

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

honor its worthy dead, to support and to
multiply its public possessions. I mean the
spirit which shows itself in the multiplying of
public libraries, in the laying out of public
parks, in the w r ork of local historical associa
tions, in the enterprises of village improve
ment societies, --yes, even in the genea
logical societies, and in the provincial clubs.
I mean also the present form of that spirit
which has originated, endowed, and fostered the
colleges and universities of our Western towns,
cities, and states, and which is so well shown
throughout our country in our American pride
in local institutions of learning. Of course,
we have always had something of this provin
cialism. It is assuming new forms amongst us.
I want to emphasize how much good it can do
in training us to higher forms of loyalty.

That such provincialism is a good national
trait to possess, the examples of Germany
and of Great Britain, in their decidedly con
trasting but equally important ways, can show
us. The English village, the English country
life, the Scotsman s love for his own native

246

SOME AMERICAN PROBLEMS

province, --these are central features in de
termining the sort of loyalty upon which the
British Empire as a whole has depended.
Germany, like ourselves, has suffered much
from sectionalism. But even to-day the Ger
man national consciousness presupposes and
depends upon a highly developed provincial
life and loyalty. One of the historical weak
nesses of France has been such a centraliza
tion of power and of social influence about
Paris as has held in check the full develop
ment of the dignity of provincial consciousness
in that country. Now, in our country w r e do
not want any mutual hatred of sections. But
we do want a hearty growth of provincial
ideals. And we want this growth just for
the sake of the growth of a more general and
effective patriotism. We want to train na
tional loyalty through provincial loyalty. We
want the ideals of the various provinces of
our country to be enriched and made definite,
and then to be strongly represented in the
government of the nation. For, I insist, it is
not the sect, it is not the labor-union, it is not

247

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

the political partisan organization, but it is
the widely developed provincial loyalty which
is the best mediator between the narrower
interests of the individual and the larger
patriotism of our nation. Further centraliza
tion of power in the national government, with
out a constantly enriched and diversified pro
vincial consciousness, can only increase the
estrangement of our national spirit from its own
life. On the other hand, history shows that
if you want a great people to be strong, you
must depend upon provincial loyalties to me
diate between the people and their nation.

The present tendency to the centralization
of power in our national government seems to
me, then, a distinct danger. It is a substitu
tion of power for loyalty. To the increase of
a wise provincialism in our country, I myself
look for the best general social means of train
ing our people in loyalty to loyalty. But of
course such training in loyalty to loyalty must
largely be a matter of the training of indi
viduals, and to the problem of individual train
ing for loyalty our next lecture will be devoted.

248

VI

TRAINING FOR LOYALTY

LECTURE VI

TRAINING FOR LOYALTY

TWO objections which have been expressed
to me by hearers of the foregoing lectures
of this course deserve a word of mention here,
as I begin the present discussion of the work
of training individuals for a loyal life.

The first of these objections concerns my
use of the term " loyalty. " " Why," so the ob
jection runs, "why can you not avoid the
endless repetition of your one chosen term,
* loyalty ? Why would not other words, such
as fidelity, devotion, absorption, trustworthi
ness, faithfulness, express just as well the
moral quality to which you give the one name
that you have employed?"

The second objection concerns my defini
tion of the term "loyalty," and is closely con-

251

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

nected with the first objection. It runs as
follows: "Why do you insist that the cause
which the loyal man serves must be a social
cause ? Why might one not show the same
essential moral quality that you define, when
the cause that he serves is something quite
unearthly, or something earthly but quite
unsocial ? Saint Simeon on his pillar, Buddha
seeking enlightenment under his lonely tree,
the Greek geometer attempting to square the
circle, were they not as faithful as your
loyal man is ? And were their causes social
causes ?"

I reply to these objections together. I have
defined my present usage of the popular term
"loyalty" in my own distinctly technical way.
Loyalty so far means for us, in these lectures,
the willing, the thoroughgoing, and the prac
tical devotion of a self to a cause. And a
cause means, in these lectures, something
that is conceived by its loyal servant as unify
ing the lives of various human begins into one
life. Now, I know of no other word whose
popular usage comes closer than does that of

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TRAINING FOR LOYALTY

the good old word "loyalty" to embodying the
meaning that I have given to the term. I
think, then, that I have a right to my technical
definition. It is based upon popular usage, and
goes beyond that usage only in a very natural
way. I intend soon to show you that we
are now ready to substitute for this first tech
nical definition another and a still more sig
nificant definition which will reveal to us, for
the first time, the true spirit of the enterprise
in which all the loyal are actually engaged.
But I can reach this higher definition only
through the simpler definition. To that, in
adequate as it is, my discussion must cling
until we are ready for something better.

Granting, however, my ow T n definition of
my term, I cannot easily use any other popular
or philosophical term in the same way. I
cannot substitute the word "devotion" for the
term "loyalty, " since loyalty is to my mind a
very special kind of devotion. A man might
be devoted to the pursuit of pleasure; but
that would not make him loyal. Fidelity,
again, is, in my own account, but one aspect

253

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

of loyalty. Loyalty includes fidelity, but
means more, since, besides fidelity, decisive
ness and the acceptance of a cause also be
long to loyalty ; and the fidelity of a dog to his
master is only a pathetic hint of loyalty, or a
fragment of the disposition that, in human
beings, expresses itself in the full reasonable
ness of loyal life. The same comment holds
in case of the word "faithfulness." As for ab
sorption, the loyal are absorbed in their cause,
but the angry man is absorbed in his pas
sion. Yet such absorption is not what I have
in mind. The loyal, again, possess trust
worthiness, but a watch may also be trust
worthy ; and that word ill expresses the vol
untary nature of the spirit of loyalty.

I cannot find, then, another term to meet
my purpose. My usage of this term is justi
fied mainly by that simplification of our con
ceptions of the moral life which our theory
has made possible.

As for my insistence upon the social aspect
of the loyal life, that insistence implies two
assertions about such cases as those of the

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TRAINING FOR LOYALTY

lonely saint on the pillar, or Buddha seeking
enlightenment, or the geometer trying to solve
his problem. The first assertion is that all
such lonely enterprises have moral value only
when they are indeed a part of one s service
of the cause of humanity. The saint on the
pillar was presumably trying to add to the
store of merits which the universal church
was supposed to possess. If so, he had a
social cause which he served ; namely, the
church, the mystic union of all the faithful.
His cause may have been wrongly conceived
by him, but it was, in our sense, a cause, and
a social one. The Buddha of the legend was
seeking to save not only himself but mankind.
He was loyal, therefore, in our sense. As for
the geometer, his search for the solution of his
problem concerned one of the deepest com
mon interests of the human mind ; namely,
an interest in the discovery and possession of
rational truth. Truth is for everybody; and
it unifies the lives of all men. Whoever seeks
for a truth, as important as geometrical truth
is, and seeks it with a serious devotion, has a

235

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

social cause. And no utterly lonely devotion
to anything is morally worthy of a human
being.

My second assertion as to the social aspect
of causes is this. Sometimes men have indeed
sought to serve God in an actually unsocial
way, and have been devoted to a world of
unseen and superhuman beings. But such
beings, if they are real and are worthy of a
moral devotion at all, are worthy of the devo
tion of all mankind ; and in such devotion, if
it is indeed justified, all men may be blessed.
The worship of the gods, even when a lonely
worshipper has expressly tried not to think of
his fellows, has therefore always implied a
loyalty to the cause of one s own people, or
else of mankind at large. The Christian s
devotion to God is inseparably bound up with
his loyalty to the mystic union of the faithful
in the church. The non-social aspect of
genuine worship is therefore but apparent.
Religion seeks a certain fulfilment of the
purposes of the moral life, a fulfilment
which we are hereafter to study. On the

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TRAINING FOR LOYALTY

other hand, loyalty itself, as a devotion to a
cause which unifies many human lives, is, as
we shall see, profoundly religious in its spirit.
For men, viewed merely as natural phe
nomena, are many, and mutually conflicting
creatures. Loyalty aims at their unity, and
such unity, as w r e shall see, is always some
thing that has its supernatural meaning. In
brief, then, to worship divine powers in a
genuinely ethical spirit, is always to serve a
cause which is also, in the human sense,
social, the cause of the state, or of the church,
or of humanity; while, on the other hand,
loyally to serve causes is to aim to give hu
man life a supernatural, an essentially divine
meaning.

And these are the reasons why I have in
sisted upon the social aspect of loyalty.

Bear, then, I pray you, with my too often
repeated term; accept its apparently too
narrow definition. We are on the way
towards a view of the spiritual unity of all
human life, a view which may serve to
justify this technical usage of a term, this

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

long dwelling upon the details of the moral
life, these seemingly commonplace com
ments upon social problems.

II

How shall individuals be trained for a loyal
life ? That is the question of the present
lecture. In trying to answer this question I
shall first dwell, briefly, and very inadequately,
upon the place that a training for loyalty
should occupy in the education of the young.
Then I shall speak of the way in which ma
ture people are trained for such forms of loy
alty as belong to the actual business of the
social world.

Whether you like my use of terms or not,
you will agree that training the young for a
willing and thoroughgoing devotion of the
self to a social cause, must be a long and
manifold task. Before true loyalty can ap
pear in any but rather crude and fragmen
tary forms in the life of a growing human
being, a long discipline of the whole mind
must have preceded. One must have become

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capable of conceiving what a social cause is.
One must have learned decisiveness and
fidelity through an elaborate general prepara
tion of the will. Therefore, while the begin
nings of loyalty extend far back into the life
of childhood, its full development must be
long to mature years. Affection, obedience,
a gradually increasing persistence in whole
some activities, a growing patience and self-
control, all these, in the natural growth of a
human being, are preliminaries to the more
elaborate forms of loyalty. By themselves
they are not loyalty. In accordance with the
general trend of modern educational theory,
we therefore naturally point out that, in train
ing children for future loyalty, teachers must
avoid trying to awaken any particular sort of
loyalty before its fitting basis is laid, and
before a sufficient age has been reached. The
basis in question involves a rich development
of social habits. The age for true and system
atic loyalty can hardly precede adolescence.
One must obtain the material for a moral
personality before a true conscience can be

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

won. Conscience, as we have seen, is the
flower and not the root of the moral life.

But there is one contribution which child
hood early makes to a possible future loyalty,
a contribution which we sometimes fail
to take sufficiently into account. That con
tribution is the well-known disposition to
idealize heroes and adventures, to live an
imaginary life, to have ideal comrades, and to
dream of possible great enterprises. I have
for years insisted, along with many others who
have studied our educational problems, that
these arts of idealization which childhood so
often and so spontaneously practises, are not
only in themselves fascinating and joyous, but
are also a very important preliminary to that
power to conceive the true nature of social
causes upon which later loyalty depends. If
I have never been fascinated in childhood by
my heroes and by the wonders of life, it is
harder to fascinate me later with the call of
duty. Loyalty, as we have already seen, and
as we have yet further to see, is an idealizing
of human life, a communion with invisible

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aspects of our social existence. Too great
literalness in the interpretation of human
relations is, therefore, a foe to the develop
ment of loyalty. If my neighbor is to me
merely a creature of a day, who walks and
eats and talks and buys and sells, I shall never
learn to be loyal to his cause and to mine.
But the child who plays with ideal comrades,
or who idealizes w r ith an unconscious wisdom
our literal doings and his own, is, in his own
way, getting glimpses of that real spiritual
world whose truth and whose unity we have
hereafter more fully to consider. It is in his
fantasies, then, that a child begins to enter
into the kingdom of heaven. Such fantasies
may need to be carefully guarded. They
may take a dangerous or even a disastrous
turn in the life of one or another child. But
in their better phases they are not mere illu
sions and are great blessings. They are
prophecies of the coming of conscience, and
of a possible union with the world of an
actually divine truth.

Yet since loyalty involves conduct, such

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

fantasies of childhood are indeed but a prep
aration for loyalty. And higher loyalty be
longs later. But in normal childhood there
do indeed appear, in a fragmentary way,
forms of conduct which already include a
simple, but, so far as it goes, an actual loy
alty to the causes the child already under
stands. You all know some of these forms.
The members of a gang of boys, sometimes of
bad boys, show a certain loyalty to the cause
represented by the gang. School children
develop the code of honor that forbids the
telling of tales to the teacher. Truthfulness
becomes a conscious virtue early in normal
childhood, and has its own childish casuistry,
often an amusing one.

The rule, of course, regarding all such
childhood beginnings of loyalty is that we
should always respect whatever is in the
least socially tolerable about the expressions
of even the crudest loyalty. The parent or
teacher who trifles with the code of honor of
children by encouraging the talebearer, or
by even requiring that a child should become,

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TRAINING FOR LOYALTY

an informer, is simply encouraging disloyalty.
He outrages the embryonic conscience of his
young charges.

For the rest, children appreciate the loy
alty or disloyalty of our conduct towards them
sooner than they can define their own duty.
And the one who would train for loyalty must
therefore be, in his dealings with children,
peculiarly scrupulous about his own loyalty.

Ill

But after all, whatever be the best train
ing of childhood for a coming moral life, the
rapid development of loyalty itself belongs
to adolescence, just as the outcome of that
development is reached only in mature life.
Upon the importance of youth as the natural
period for training in more elaborate forms of
loyal conduct, our recent authority regarding
adolescence, President Stanley Hall, has in
sisted. In normal youth various forms of
loyalty, of a highly complex character, appear
with a great deal of spontaneity. Two of
these forms have become important in the life

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

of the youth of many nations, and certainly
in the life of our own American youth to-day.
The one form is loyalty to the fraternal or
ganization, very generally to a secret fra
ternity. The other form is loyalty to one s
own side in an athletic contest, or to one s
college or other institution, viewed as an
athletic entity.

Both of these forms of loyalty have their
excesses, and lead to well-known abuses. The
secret fraternities may become organizations
for general mischief and disorder; the ath
letic contests may involve overmuch passion,
and may even do harm to the general loyalty
by fostering the spirit of unfair play. Now, it
is notable that both of these sorts of abuses
increase when the fraternities and the athletic
organizations are imitated in the lower schools
by the children. The resulting dangers show
that loyalty ought not to be a prematurely
forced plant. It should grow, in its various
forms, in its due time. Hence those in charge
of our secondary schools should not be misled
by their knowledge of the preciousness of loy-

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TRAINING FOR LOYALTY

ally into encouraging an overhasty develop
ment of secret fraternities and of fully formed
athletic organizations amongst those who are
not old enough to reap the fruits of such forms
of loyalty. The coming of true loyalty may be
seriously hindered by the too early organiza
tion of the perfectly natural gang of boys into
some too elaborate social structure. Harm
has been done of late years by too much aping
of athletic and fraternity life in connection with
the lower grades of schools.

But when youth is fairly reached, and the
secret fraternity and the athletic organization
become spontaneously prominent, it is plain
that our efforts to train our youth to a higher
life must recognize these natural types of
loyalty, but must do so without overempha
sizing their cruder features. We must always
build upon what we have; and therefore any
unnecessary hostility to the fraternities and to
the athletic life is profoundly objectionable.
But the most unhappy features of the athletic,
and in some measure of the fraternity, life in
our colleges and universities are due to the

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

false social prominence which the public opin
ion of those who have nothing to do with college
life often forces upon our youth. The athletic
evils, such as they are, of our academic world,
are not due to the college students themselves
nearly so much as to the absurd social promi
nence which the newspapers and the vast
modern crowds give to contests which ought
to be cheerful youthful sports, wherein a
natural loyalty is to be trained, but wherein a
national prominence of the games and the con
testants is utterly out of place. It is as absurd
to overemphasize such matters as it is wicked to
interfere unnecessarily with any other aspect
of youthful moral development. It is the
extravagant publicity of our intercollegiate
sports which is responsible for their principal
evils. Leave wholesome youth to their natural
life, not irritated and not aroused to unwise
emotions by the exaggerated comments of the
press, and our athletic organizations would
serve their proper function of training the
muscles as well as the souls of our youth to
loyalty. As for the fraternities, the false

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social prominence which their graduate mem
bers sometimes force upon them is a distinct
hindrance to the work that they can do in train
ing youth for a loyal life.

Fair play in sport is a peculiarly good instance
of loyalty. And in insisting upon the spirit
of fair play, the elders who lead and who or
ganize our youthful sports can do a great work
for the nation. The coach, or the other leader
in college sports, to whom fair play is not a first
concern, is simply a traitor to our youth and to
our nation. If the doctrine of these lectures
is right, we can see with what stupendous hu
man interests he is trifling.

As to other ways in which the loyalty of our
youth can be trained, we still too much lack,
in this country, dignified modes of celebrating
great occasions. Once the Fourth of July
was a day for training patriotic loyalty ; it has
now degenerated, and is probably irretrievably
lost to the cause of true loyalty. Memorial
Day and our national Thanksgiving Day are
our best holidays for expressing loyalty to the
community and to the nation. Let us cherish

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them, and preserve them from desecration.
But with us both holidays and public cere
monials have a certain democratic tendency to
degeneration. We need more means for sym
bolizing loyalty, both in public monuments
and in ceremonials, as well as in forms of
common public service to our community.
European nations glorify the army as a prac
tical teacher of loyalty to the youth. The
loyalty thus won is mingled with the war-spirit,
and is therefore dear bought. But we unques
tionably need substitutes for military service
as a means of training for a loyal life. It be
longs to the task of our social leaders to invent
and to popularize such substitutes. Herein lies
one of the great undertakings of the future.

IV

The true sphere of a complete loyalty is
mature life. We constantly need, all of us,
individual training in the art of loyalty.
How is this work accomplished in the social
order ? In answering this question, let history
and our daily social experience be our guides.

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TRAINING FOR LOYALTY

The main lessons that these guides teach us, as
I think, are three : First, our loyalty is trained
and kept alive by the influence of personal
leaders. Secondly, the higher forms of train
ing for loyalty involve a momentous process
which I shall call the Idealizing of the Cause.
Thirdly, loyalty is especially perfected through
great strains, labors, and sacrifices in the ser
vice of the cause.

Of the three factors here mentioned, the
first and second are inseparable and universal.
If we are to be made loyal, we want personal
leaders, and highly idealized causes. In ex
ceptional cases a man may seem to be his own
sole leader in loyalty. But this is rare. Al
ways, to be sure, a loyal man uses his own
leadership, since, as we saw in our fourth lec
ture, his conscience is his leader. But usually
he needs the aid of other personal leaders be
sides himself. As for the idealizing of the
cause, I have called it a momentous process.
How momentous we shall soon see. For it is
by this process that we are introduced into the
true spiritual world.

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

Let me illustrate my theses. We are all
familiar with the history of clubs and of sec
tarian social organizations generally. Now
how are these social enterprises, good or evil,
made to succeed ?

You all know that if a club or a sect is to be
begun, or if a political or social movement is
to be rendered effective, two things are neces
sary: first, a leader, or a group of leaders,
eager, enthusiastic, convinced, or, at the worst,
capable of speaking as if they were convinced, -
leaders persistent, obstinate, and in their own
fitting way aggressive ; and, secondly, a cause
that can be idealized so that, when the leaders
talk of it in their glowing exhortations, it seems
to be a sort of supernatural being, in one sense
impersonal, but in another sense capable of
being personified, an exalted but still per
sonally interesting spiritual power. The two
aspects of loyalty, the personal and the seem
ingly superpersonal, must thus be emphasized
together.

Consider, in particular, the process of mak
ing almost any new club succeed. Some group

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of persons, sometimes a single leader, must be
found, willing to devote time and energy to
directing the new organization. The leader
or leaders must believe the enterprise worth
while, must proclaim its importance in vigor
ous terms, and must patiently stand by the
club through all the doubtful first period of its
existence. But the personal influence of these
leaders cannot be enough to arouse any genuine
loyalty in the members of the club, unless the
organization itself can be made to appear as
a sort of ideal personality, of a higher than
merely human type. If the leaders impress
their companions as being people who are
concerned merely with their own private im
portance, they in vain persist in their propa
ganda. In that case the club is nicknamed as
their particular pet or as their fad ; one makes
light of their energy, one maligns their motives,
and the club crumbles into nothing. In order
to succeed, the leaders must give to the club
the character of a sort of ideal entity, often
of an improvised mythological goddess, who
is to be conceived as favoring her devotees,

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

as bestowing upon them extraordinary social
or spiritual benefits. Even the convivial festi
vals of the club, if such festivals there be,
must have some sort of ceremonial dignity
about them, a dignity such as suggests the
impersonal or superpersonal rank of the club
as an ideal. The club must become a cause,
in whose service the members are one. If it is
a reform club, or other body engaged in a
propaganda, then social interests that lie out
side of the boundaries of the club s separate
being serve to define this cause; the club is
then merely an instrument to further a loyalty
that is intelligible apart from the existence of
this very instrument; and in such a case the
leaders of the club have mainly to insist effec
tively upon the importance of this already exist
ing loyalty. But if the club is to be an end in
itself, an organization that exists for its own
sake and for the sake of its own members,
the process of learning to ascribe to the new
club the ideal dignity of a common cause is
sometimes a difficult process. The devices
used by the leaders are, upon occasion, very

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TRAINING FOR LOYALTY

direct. One simply calls the club an ideal;
one personifies it in various poetical ways;
and one praises it as a sort of superhuman
being. Or, more practically still, one incor
porates the club, endows it with a legal per
sonality, and makes it a property owner.
But other devices are more indirect. Club
ceremonials and festivals, some more or less
rudimentary club ritual, perhaps also the
various familiar devices of the secret societies,
the air of mystery, club emblems and symbols,
all serve to give to the club the appearances,
at least, of a fitting cause for the exercise of
loyalty. Another indirect device consists in
naming the club after famous or beloved peo
ple, now dead, whose honor and whose mem
ory idealize the new organization. Or, again,
one arbitrarily calls the club ancient and dig
nifies it by a more or less conscious myth about
its past. All such devices serve to call out
loyalty in ways that may be comparatively
trivial, but that may also be of a very profound
significance, if the new organization is actually
a fitting object of loyalty.

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

With proper changes the foregoing account
applies to the plans that are useful in estab
lishing a new religious sect. Always you find
the same union of personal enthusiasm on the
part of leaders with a disposition to define the
ideal of the new organization in terms that
transcend the limits of individual human life.
Man, even when he is a member of a purely
convivial social body, is prone to try to con
ceive both his own life, and also that of this
social body, in superhuman terms. Expe
rience thus shows that a procedure of the sort
just described does succeed, in many cases, in
training people sometimes small groups,
sometimes great bodies of men to new forms
of loyalty.

The plans whereby an actually ancient
institution is kept in possession of the loyalty
of its own natural servants do not in their
essence differ from the ones just characterized.
The loyalty of a body of alumni to their
university is a classic instance of a loyalty
kept alive by the union of an institution with
the personality of its living leaders. Even

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TRAINING FOR LOYALTY

so, the loyalty of the sons of a subjugated
nationality, such as the Irish or the Poles, to
their country, is kept alive through precisely
such an union of the influence of individual
leaders with the more impersonal reverence
for the idealized, although no longer politi
cally existent nationality.

You see, so far, how the personal leaders and
the superhuman cause are inseparable in the
training of loyalty. The cause comes to be
idealized partly because the leaders so vigor
ously insist that it is indeed ideal. On the
other hand, the leaders become and remain
personally efficacious by reason of the dignity
that the cause confers upon them. Were they
considered apart from their cause, they would
seem to be merely ambitious propagandists,
seeking gain or notoriety. To those without
the range of their personal influence, they often
seem such. Yet if they did not speak for the
cause, and so give to it the life of their personal
enthusiasm, nobody would be taught to regard
their cause as ideal. The cause thus needs to
become incarnate, as it were, in the persons of

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

the leaders ; but the leaders get their personal
influence through the fact that they seem to be
incarnations of the cause.

Facts of this sort are familiar. You can
observe them whenever you attend an anni
versary meeting, or other such ceremonial, of
your own club, and whenever you listen to
those who represent any successful propa
ganda. But how vastly significant such facts
may be in determining the lives of whole
generations and nations and races of men, you
can only judge if you read the general history
of humanity in the light of the principles now
pointed out. If our philosophy of loyalty has
any truth, the history of human loyalty con
cerns whatever is most important in the annals
of mankind. And the whole history of loyalty
is the history of the inseparable union of the
personal influence of leaders with the tendency
to idealize causes.

V

But the idealization of the cause, although
never possible without the aid of living per-

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TRAINING FOR LOYALTY

sons, may also depend upon still other factors
than the direct personal influence of leaders.
When we consider the general history of loyalty
amongst men, our attention is soon attracted
to a deeply instructive process whereby, in
certain cases, some of them very great
and wonderful cases, causes have been ideal
ized not only by the personal influence of the
leaders, but also by certain deeply pathetic
motives to which the leaders could constantly
appeal. I refer to the process illustrated by
the history of lost causes.

I referred a moment ago to the loyalty of
the Irish and of the Poles to their own lost
nationalities. Now such loyalty to a lost
cause may long survive, not merely in the
more or less unreal form of memories and
sentiments, but in a genuinely practical way.
And such loyalty to a lost cause may be some
thing that far transcends the power of any
mere habit. New plans, endless conspiracies,
fruitful social enterprises, great political or
ganizations, yes, in the extreme case,
new religions, may grow up upon the basis

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

of such a loyalty to a cause whose worldly
fortunes seem lost, but whose vitality may out
last centuries, and may involve much novel
growth of opinion, of custom, and of ideals.

The most notable religious development
which the world has ever seen, the religion of
Israel, together with its successor, Christian
ity, this whole religious evolution, is, as we
must here point out, the historical result of a
national loyalty to a lost cause. The political
unity of all the tribes of Israel, attained but
for a moment, so to speak, under David and
Solomon, and then lost from the visible world
of history, survived as an ideal. Only as
such a lost ideal could this conception of what
Israel once was and ought again to be inspire
the Old Testament prophets to speak the word
of the Lord regarding the way of righteousness
whereby, as the prophets held, the prosperity
of Israel was to be restored. Only this same
lost political ideal, and this resulting discovery
of the prophetic theory of the divine govern
ment of human affairs, could lead over to that
later religious interpretation and to that re-

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TRAINING FOR LOYALTY

writing of the whole ancient history of Israel,
which we now read in our Old Testament.
Only upon the same basis could the Messianic
idea come to be defined ; and only thus could
the prophetic doctrine of the universal future
triumph of righteousness come to be formu
lated. And so through an historical process,
every step of which depended upon a pathetic
and yet glorious loyalty to a lost national
cause, the ideals in question were at once
universalized and intensified until, through
Israel, all the nations of Christendom have
been blessed. In consequence, to-day, in
speaking of its own hopes of the salvation of
mankind, and in describing its coming king
dom of heaven, Christianity still uses the fa
miliar terms : Zion, the throne of David,
Jerusalem, terms whose original application
was to places and to persons first made notable
in their own time merely by reason of the petty
tribal feuds of an obscure province. Thus
loyalty, steadfast and yet developing through
centuries, gradually transformed what were
once seemingly insignificant matters of local

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

politics into the most sacred concerns of a
world religion.

Loyalty to lost causes is, then, not only a
possible thing, but one of the most potent
influences of human history. In such cases,
the cause comes to be idealized through its
very failure to win temporary and visible suc
cess. The result for loyalty may be vast. I
need not remind you that the early Christian
church itself was at first founded directly upon
a loyalty to its own lost cause, a cause which
it viewed as heavenly just because here on
earth the enemies seemed to have triumphed,
and because the Master had departed from
human vision. The whole history of Chris
tianity is therefore one long lesson as to how
a cause may be idealized through apparent
defeat, and how even thereby loyalty may be
taught to generation after generation of men,
and may develop into endlessly new forms,
and so may appeal to peoples to whom the
cause in question was originally wholly strange.
This history shows us how such a teaching
and such an evolution of an idea may be fur-

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TRAINING FOR LOYALTY

thered by what seems at first most likely to
discourage loyalty, that is, by loss, by sorrow,
by worldly defeat.

Loyalty to a lost cause, whatever the grade of
dignity of the cause, depends in part, of course,
upon the same motives which the simpler and
more direct forms of loyalty employ.

But when a cause is lost in the visible world,
and when, nevertheless, it survives in the
hearts of its faithful followers, one sees more
clearly than ever that its appeal is no longer
to be fully met by any possible present deed.
Whatever one can just now do for the cause is
thus indeed seen to be inadequate. All the
more, in consequence, does this cause demand
that its followers should plan and work for
the far-off future, for whole ages and aeons of
time ; should prepare the way for their Lord,
the cause, and make his paths straight. Ac
tivity becomes thus all the more strenuous,
just because its consequences are viewed as
so far-reaching and stupendous. Man s ex
tremity is loyalty s opportunity. The present
may seem dark. All the greater the work

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

yet to be done. The distant future must be
conquered. How vast the undertaking, how
vast, but therefore how inspiring !

All this larger and broader devotion of those
loyal to a lost cause is colored and illuminated
by strong emotion. Sorrow over what has
been lost pierces deep into the hearts of the
faithful. So much the more are these hearts
stirred to pour out their devotion. Mean
while, the glamour of memory is over the past.
Whatever was commonplace about the former
visible fortunes of the lost cause is now for
gotten. For the memory of those who sorrow
over loss is, as we all know, fond of precious
myths, and views these myths as a form in
which truth appears. In the great days that
have passed away in the days before the
cause suffered defeat there was indeed
tragedy; but there was glory. Legend, often
truer, yes, as Aristotle said of poetry, more
philosophical than history, thus reads into that
past not what the lost cause literally was, but
what it meant to be. Its body is dead. But
it has risen again. The imagination, chastened

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by all this grief, stirred by all this deep need,
not only reforms the story of the past, but
builds wonderful visions of what is yet to be.
Loyalty for the lost cause is thus attended
by two comrades, grief and imagination.
Yet loyalty, always strenuous and active, is
not enervated by these deep emotions, nor yet
confused by the wealth of these visions; but
rather devotes itself to resolving upon what
shall be. Grief it therefore transforms into
a stimulating sense of need. If we have lost,
then let us find. Loyalty also directs its deeds
by the visions that imagination furnishes;
and meanwhile it demands in turn that the
imagination shall supply it with visions that
can be translated into deeds. When it hears
from the imagination the story of the coming
triumph, it does not become passive. Rather
does it say: Watch, for ye know not the day
or the hour when the triumph of the cause is
to come.

Hora novissima

Tempora pessima

Sunt, vigilemus.

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

This wonderful awakening from the pros
tration of grief to the stern but fascinating re
solve to live and to be active for the lost cause,
this freeing of the imagination through the
very agony of missing the dear presence in the
visible world, and this complete control both
of such passion and of such imagination
through the will to make all things work to
gether for the good of the cause, all this is
the peculiar privilege of those who are loyal
to a cause which the world regards as lost,
and which the faithful view as ascended into
a higher realm, certain to come again in re
newed might and beauty. Thus may grief
minister to loyalty.

And I may add, as an obvious truth of hu
man nature, that loyalty is never raised to its
highest levels without such grief. For what
one learns from experience of grief over loss
is precisely the true link between loyalty as
a moral attitude, and whatever is eternally
valuable in religion. One begins, when one
serves the lost causes, to discover that, in some
sense, one ought to devote one s highest loy-

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alty precisely to the causes that are too good
to be visibly realized at any one moment of this
poor wretched fleeting time world in which
we see and touch and find mere things, mere
sensations, mere feelings of the moment.
Loyalty wants the cause in its unity; it seeks,
therefore, something essentially superhuman.
And therefore, as you see, loyalty is linked with
religion. In its highest reaches it always is,
therefore, the service of a cause that is just
now lost and lost because the mere now is
too poor a vehicle for the presentation of that
ideal unity of life of which every form of loyalty
is in quest. Loyalty to loyalty, that cause of
causes upon which I have so much insisted
in the foregoing, is indeed just now in far too
many ways a lost cause amongst men. But
that is the fault of the men, not of the cause.
Let us rejoice that we can serve a cause of
which the world, as it is, is not yet worthy.

The history of the lost causes is instructive,
however, not only as showing us a new aspect
of the value of loyalty, namely, what I have
just called the link between loyalty and religion,

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

but also as showing us something of the way
in which grief, and imagination, and the stir
ring of our whole human nature to its very
depths, through loss and through defeat, have
served in the past as means of training in loyalty.
This school of adversity has often been a hard
one. But the loyalty that has been trained
in this school has produced for us some of
humanity s most precious spiritual treasures.
Thus, then, through personal leaders and
through suffering, loyalty learns to idealize
its cause.

VI

What is the lesson of all the foregoing when
we ask : How shall we ourselves seek training
in loyalty ?

The first answer is obvious : Whatever our
cause, we need personal leaders. And how
shall we be surest of finding such personal
leaders? Shall we look exclusively to those
who are fellow- servants of our own chosen
special causes ? We all do this. Yet this is
often not enough. Familiarity and personal

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misunderstandings often interfere with the
guidance that our fellow-servants give us.
We need the wider outlook. Close friendships
are amongst the most powerful supports of
loyalty. Yet when people confine themselves
to regarding their close friends as their leaders
in loyalty, they often become narrow and for
get the cause of universal loyalty. Much of
the art of loyalty, consequently, depends upon
training yourself to observe the loyal who are
all about you, however remote their cause is
from yours, however humble their lives. It is
well also, whenever you have to fight, to learn
the art of honoring your opponent s loyalty,
even if you learn of it mainly through feeling
the weight and the sharpness of his sword.
"It is a deep cut; but a loyal enemy was he
who could give it to me" -to think in such
terms is to lighten the gloom of conflict with
what may sometimes be more precious than a
transient victory; for at such moments of
honoring the loyally dangerous enemy, we
begin to learn that all the loyal are in spirit
serving, however unwittingly, the same uni-

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versal cause. To be sure, when men have
once sufficiently learned that lesson, they cease
to fight. But while fighting lasts, if you cannot
love your enemy, it is a beautiful thing to be
able to enjoy the sight of his loyalty.

But men have not to fight one another in
order to display loyalty. Open your eyes, then,
to observe better the loyalty of the peaceful,
as well as of the warriors. Consider especially
the loyalty of the obscure, of the humble, of
your near neighbors, of the strangers who by
chance come under your notice. For such
exemplars of loyalty you always have. Make
them your leaders. Regard every loyal man
as your leader in the service of the cause of
universal loyalty.

VII

But our review of the history of loyalty
taught us another lesson. We need not only
leaders. We need to idealize our causes ;
that is, to see in them whatever most serves
to link them to the cause of universal loyalty.

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And the procedure whereby our causes are to
be idealized is one involving a range of possible
experiences and activities far too vast to be
adequately surveyed in our present discussion.
Here belong all those practically valuable rela
tions between loyalty and art, and between
loyalty and religion, which the history of man
kind illustrates and which we can use in our
own training for loyalty. Art supports loyalty
whenever it associates our cause with beautiful
objects, whenever it sets before us the symbols
of our cause in any worthy expression, and
whenever, again, by showing us any form
of the beautiful, it portrays to us that very
sort of learning and unity that loyalty cease
lessly endeavors to bring into human life.
Thus viewed, art may be a teacher of loyalty.
To say this is in no wise to prejudge the fa
mous question regarding the main purpose of
art, and the relation of this purpose of art to
the moral life. I am attempting here no theory
of art. But it belongs to our present province
merely to insist that part of our education in
loyalty is to be won through whatever love of

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

beauty and whatever knowledge of the beau
tiful we possess. The monuments of any cause
that possesses monuments should associate
our love of this cause with our love for beauty.
Our personal causes, if they are worthy at all,
need beautiful symbols to express to us their
preciousness. Whatever is beautiful appears
to us to embody harmonious relations. And
the practical search for harmony of life consti
tutes loyalty. And thus training for loyalty
includes the knowledge of the beautiful.

Still more universal in its efficacy as an ideal-
izer of private and personal causes is religion.
In how far a genuinely religious experience
results from loyalty, and in how far loyalty
bears witness to any religiously significant
truth, we have hereafter to see. Our closing
lectures will deal with the bearing of loyalty
upon religion. But we have here to mention,
in passing, the converse relation ; namely, the
influence of religion upon loyalty. We have
to point out how large a part of the function
of religion in human affairs consists in the
idealizing of our loyalties, by linking our causes,

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whatever they are, to a world which seems to
us to be superhuman.

VIII

Art and religion, however, are not our only *
means for teaching ourselves to view our
personal causes as linked with universal hu
man interests, and with an unseen superhu
man world. Sorrow, defeat, disappointment,
failure, whenever these result from our efforts
to serve a cause, may all be used to teach us
the same lesson. How such lessons have been
taught to humanity at large, the history of those
lost causes which have been, even because of
the loss, transformed into causes of permanent
and world-w^ide importance, has now shown us.
This lesson of the history of the lost causes is,
however, one that has deep importance for
our individual training. We do not always
read this lesson aright. To keep our loyalty
steadfast through defeat is something that we
often view as a sort of extra strain upon loyalty,
the overcoming of a painful hindrance to

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

loyalty. We ought not so to view the matter.
Defeat and sorrow, when they are incurred in
the service of a cause, ought rather to be a
positive aid to loyalty. If we rightly view
them, they will prove to be such an aid. For
they enable us to see whether we have really
given ourselves to the cause, or whether what
we took for loyalty was a mere flare of sanguine
emotion. When sorrow over a defeat in the
service of our cause reverberates all through
us, it can be made to reveal whatever loyalty
we have. Let us turn our attention to this
revelation, even while we suffer. We shall
then know for what we have been living. And
whoever, once deliberately dwelling upon his
cause at a moment of defeat, does not find
the cause dearer to him because of his grief,
has indeed yet to learn what loyalty is. The
cause, furthermore, when viewed in the light
of our sorrow over our loss of its present for
tunes, at once tends to become idealized,
as the lost throne of David was idealized by
Israel, and as the departed Master s cause was
idealized by the early church.

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The disciples, in the well-known story, say
concerning their lost Master to the stranger
whom they meet on the lonely road to Emmaus :
" We had trusted that it was he who should
have redeemed Israel." But soon after "their
eyes were opened, and they knew him, and he
vanished out of their sight." Amongst all
the legends of the risen Lord, this one most
completely expresses the spirit of that loyalty
which, triumphing even through defeat, win
ning the spirit even through the loss of a visible
presence, was thereafter to conquer its world.

Now, the lesson of such experiences, as his
tory records them, relates not merely to great
movements and to mankind at large. It is
a personal lesson. It concerns each one of
us. I repeat : View your sorrow by itself, and
it is a blind and hopeless fact; view your
cause in the light of your sorrow, and the cause
becomes transfigured. For you learn hereby
that it was not this or that fortune, nor even
this or that human life which constituted your
cause. There was from the beginning, about
your cause, something that to human vision

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seems superpersonal, unearthly as well as
earthly. Now the memory of whatever is lost
about your cause is peculiarly adapted to bring
to your consciousness what this superpersonal
element has been. I have already mentioned
the merely psychological aspects of the pro
cess that, in such cases, goes on. The gla
mour which memory throws about the past,
the awakening of the imagination when some
visible presence is removed, the stimulating
reaction from the first stroke of sorrow when
ever we are able once more to think of our cause
itself, the transformation of our own ideas
about the cause, by virtue of the very fact that,
since our loss has so changed life, the cause
can no longer be served in the old way, and
must be the object of new efforts, and so of
some new form of devotion, all these are the
idealizing motives which are present when
defeat comes. I insist, human loyalty can
never be perfected without such sorrow. Re
gard defeat and bereavement, therefore, as
loyalty s opportunity. Use them deliberately
as means for idealizing the cause, and so far

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bringing your personal cause into closer touch
with the cause of universal loyalty.

The most familiar of all those blows of for
tune which seem to us, for the moment, to
make our personal cause a lost cause, is death,
when it comes to those with whom our per
sonal cause has so far been bound up. And
yet what motive in human life has done more
to idealize the causes of individuals than death
has done ? Death, viewed as a mere fact of
human experience, and as a merely psychologi
cal influence, has been one of the greatest
idealizers of human life. The memory of the
dead idealizes whatever interest the living have
in former days shared with the departed.
Reverence for the dead dignifies the effort to
carry on the work that they began, or that, if
they died in childhood, our fond desire would
have had them live to do. From the beginning
a great portion of the religious imagination of
mankind has centred about the fact of death.
And the same motive works to-day in the
minds of all the loyal, whatever their faith.

Idealize your cause. This has been our

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

maxim for the present aspect of our personal
training in loyalty. I have offered merely some
hints as to how this maxim may be carried into
effect. How science can join with art and with
religion, how joyous friendly intercourse can
in its own place cooperate with our experiences
of sorrow to teach us the lessons of idealizing
our common causes, all this I can only indi
cate.

And thus we have before us two of the
methods whereby individual loyalty is trained.
The deliberate fixing of our attention upon the
doings of loyal people, the deliberate use of
those methods of human nature which tend
to idealize our cause, these are means for
training in loyalty.

Yet one method remains, it is the most
commonplace, yet often the hardest of all.
Loyalty means giving the Self to the Cause.
And the art of giving is learned by giving.
Strain, endurance, sacrifice, toil, the dear
pangs of labor at the moments when perhaps
defeat and grief most seem ready to crush our
powers, and when only the very vehemence of

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labor itself saves us from utter despair, these
are the things that most teach us what loyalty
really is. I need not enlarge here upon an
ancient and constantly repeated lesson of life,
a lesson which is known to all of you. The
partisans of war often glorify war as a mor-
alizer of humanity, because, as they say,
only the greatest strains and dangers can teach
men true loyalty. I do not think that war is
needed for such lessons. The loyalty of the
most peaceful enables us all to experience,
sooner or later, what it means to give, whatever
it was in our power to give, for the cause, and
then to see our cause take its place, to human
vision, amongst the lost causes. When such
experiences come, let us face them without
hesitation. For all these things together,
our personal friends who inspire us to the
service of our own causes, the hosts of the loyal
whom we know so little, but who constitute
the invisible church of those who live in the
spirit, the griefs that teach us the glory of what
our human vision has lost from its field, the
imagination that throws over all the range of

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human life its idealizing light, the labors that
leave us breathless, the crushing defeats that
test our devotion, well, these, these are all
only the means and the ministers whereby we
are taught to enter the realm of spiritual truth.

298

VII

LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY

LECTURE VII

LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY

IN closing my last lecture I said that what
ever trains us in the arts of loyalty enables
us to enter into a world of spiritual truth.
These words were intended to indicate that
the loyal life has another aspect than the one
hitherto most emphasized in these lectures.
Our foregoing account has been deliberately
one-sided. We have been discussing the moral
life as if one could define a plan of conduct
without implying more about man s place in
the real universe than we have yet made ex
plicit in these lectures. Hence our discussion,
so far, is open to obvious objections.

For, in talking about the good of loyalty,
we have indeed appealed to human experience
to show us wherein that good consists. But
our very appeal also showed us that loyalty is
good for a man precisely because he believes
that his cause itself, even apart from his ser-

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vice, is good, and that both his cause and its
goodness are realities, founded in facts which
far transcend his individual life and his per
sonal experience. Now, one may well doubt
whether this belief of a loyal man is, in any
individual case, a well-founded belief. And
if it is not well founded, one may well ques
tion whether the loyal man s good is not,
after all, an illusory good, which will vanish
from his experience as soon as he becomes
enlightened. Since any instance of loyalty
is subject to this sceptical inquiry, one may
doubt whether even what we have called the
supreme cause, that of loyalty to loyalty, is
a good cause. For any or all loyalties may be
founded in illusion, and then it would be an
illusion that the fostering of loyalty amongst
men is a finally worthy undertaking.

Objections of this sort are best stated by
those to whom they actually occur as serious
difficulties regarding the discussions contained
in the foregoing lectures. A dear friend of

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LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY

mine, without receiving any instigation from
me to help me by such an act, has so aptly
summed up the objections here in question,
that I can best show you precisely where we now
stand by reading to you a portion of a letter
which he has written to me, after hearing the
first portion of my account of the good of
loyalty.

" Loyalty to loyalty," writes my friend,
"doesn t seem ultimate. Is it not loyalty to
all objects of true loyalty that is our ultimate
duty? The object, not the relation, the
universe and the devotion to it, not the devo
tion alone, is the object of our ultimate devo
tion. ... Is it not the glory of this goal that
lends dignity to all loyal search, our own
or that of others ? It is because of this goal
that we cheer on all to pursue it. ... It is
because of what we believe about the end of
the various loyalties that we are so glad of all
the loyalties which make it possible to attain
that end. The port gives value to the courses
steering for it. ... Except for our knowl
edge of the value of their destination, and of

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all life lived in quest of that destination, should
we be anxious to urge all seekers along their
courses ? . . . Loyalty is a relation. ... Can
we be loyal to anything, ultimately, except
the universe which is the object of all love
and all knowledge?"

So far my friend s statement of his difficulty.
As you will see, from these two closing lec
tures of my course which still remain, I cor
dially share my friend s objection to the
definition of loyalty so far insisted upon in
these lectures. Our definition of loyalty, and
of its relation to the ultimate good which the
loyal are seeking, has so far been inadequate.
But, as I told you in the opening lecture, we
deliberately began with an inadequate defi
nition of the nature of loyalty. We were
obliged to do so. I expressly said this in my
opening statement. Why we were obliged
to do so, and why, thus far in these lectures,
we have confined ourselves to developing and
to illustrating the consequences of this im
perfect definition of loyalty, our closing lec
tures will of themselves, I hope, make clear.

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LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY

A similar difficulty can be urged against any
mere moralism, that is, against any purely
ethical theory of the moral life. One wants
a doctrine of the real world, or a religion, to
help out one s ethics. For, as I have replied
to my friend, morality, viewed by itself, has
a character that can well be suggested by the
parable of the talents. The moral life, re
garded simply as the moral life, is the ser
vice of a master who seems, to those who
serve him, to have gone away into a far
country. His servants have faith in him, but
the service of his cause always has, for the
moral, a certain mystery about it. They
can indeed become sure, apart from any solu
tion of this mystery, that their own supreme
personal good lies in serving their lord. For
not otherwise can they find even the relative
peace that lies in a service of duty. But
those who serve are not thus altogether
secured against a pessimism regarding the
whole outcome of human endeavor. For if
loyalty is indeed our best, may not even this
best itself be a failure ?

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

Or, to use further the similitude of the
parable of the talents : It may be indeed our
supreme good to serve the master who has
gone into the far country. Yet we do not
merely want to serve him ; we want, like Job,
to meet him face to face. Suppose that we
should discover the master to be indeed un
worthy or a phantom or a deceiver, would
even this, our best good, the service of his
cause, seem permanently valuable ? Should
we not say, some day : To serve him was our
best chance of life; but after all even that
service was vanity.

In any case, our loyalty implies a faith in
the master, an assurance that life, at its best,
is indeed worth while. Our philosophy of
loyalty must therefore include an attempt
to see the master of life himself, and to find
out whether in truth he is, what our loyalty
implies that he is, a master worth serving.

To sum up : So far we have defined the
moral life as loyalty, and have shown why
the moral life is for us men the best life.
But now we want to know what truth is

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LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY

behind and beneath the moral life. With
my friendly correspondent, we want to see
the relation of loyalty to the real universe.

II

What must be true about the universe if
even loyalty itself is a genuine good, and not
a merely inevitable human illusion ?

Well, loyalty is a service of causes. A
cause, if it really is what our definition re
quires, links various human lives into the
unity of one life. Therefore, if loyalty has
any basis in truth, human lives can be linked
in some genuine spiritual unity. Is such
unity a fact, or is our belief in our causes a
mere point of view, a pathetic fallacy ? Surely,
if any man, however loyal, discovers that his
cause is a dream, and that men remain as
a fact sundered beings, not really linked by
genuine spiritual ties, how can that man re
main loyal ? Perhaps his supreme good in
deed lies in believing that such unities are
real. But if this belief turns out to be an

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

illusion, and if a man detects the illusion, can
he any longer get the good out of loyalty?

And as for even this personal good that is
to be got out of loyalty, we have all along
seen that such good comes to a loyal man s
mind in a very paradoxical way. A loyal
man gets good, but since he gets it by believ
ing that his cause has a real existence outside
of his private self, and is of itself a good
thing, he gets the fascination of loyalty not
as a private delight of his own, but as a ful
filment of himself through self-surrender to
an externally existing good, through a will
ing abandonment of the seeking of his own
delight. And so the loyal man s good is
essentially an anticipation of a good that he
regards as not his own, but as existent in the
cause. The cause, however, is itself no one
fellow-man, and no mere collection of fellow-
men. It is a family, a country, a church, or
is such a rational union of many human minds
and wills as we have in mind when we speak
of a science or an art. Now, can such causes
contain any good which is not simply a col-

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LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY

lection of separate human experiences of
pleasure or of satisfaction ? Thus, then, both
the reality and the good of a loyal man s
cause must be objects of the loyal man s
belief in order that he should be able to get
the experience of loyalty. And if his loyalty
is indeed well founded, there must be unities
of spiritual life in the universe such that no
one man ever, by himself, experiences these
unities as facts of his own consciousness.
And these higher unities of life must possess
a degree and a type of goodness, a genuine
value, such that no one man, and no mere
collection of men, can ever exhaustively ex
perience this goodness, or become personally
possessed of this value.

How paradoxical a world, then, must the
real world be, if the faith of the loyal is indeed
well founded ! A spiritual unity of life, which
transcends the individual experience of any
man, must be real. For loyalty, as we have
seen, is a service of causes that, from the
human point of view, appear superpersonal.
Loyalty holds these unities to be good. If

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loyalty is right, the real goodness of these
causes is never completely manifested to any
one man, or to any mere collection of men.
Such goodness, then, if completely experienced
at all, must be experienced upon some higher
level of consciousness than any one human
being ever reaches. If loyalty is right, social
causes, social organizations, friendships, fam
ilies, countries, yes, humanity, as you see,
must have the sort of unity of consciousness
which individual human persons fragmen-
tarily get, but must have this unity upon a
higher level than that of our ordinary human
individuality.

Some such view, I say, must be held if we
are to regard loyalty as in the end anything
more than a convenient illusion. Loyalty
has its metaphysical aspect. It is an effort to
conceive human life in an essentially super
human way, to view our social organizations
as actual personal unities of consciousness,
unities wherein there exists an actual experi
ence of that good which, in our loyalty, we
only partially apprehend. If the loyalty of

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LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY

the lovers is indeed well founded in fact, then
they, as separate individuals, do not constitute
the whole truth. Their spiritual union also
has a personal, a conscious existence, upon a
higher than human level. An analogous unity
of consciousness, an unity superhuman in
grade, but intimately bound up with, and in
clusive of, our apparently separate personali
ties, must exist, if loyalty is well founded,
wherever a real cause wins the true devotion of
ourselves. Grant such an hypothesis, and
then loyalty becomes no pathetic serving of a
myth. The good which our causes possess,
then, also becomes a concrete fact for an
experience of a higher than human level.
That union of self-sacrifice with self-assertion
which loyalty expresses becomes a conscious
ness of our genuine relations to a higher social
unity of consciousness in which we all have
our being. For from this point of view we
are, and we have our worth, by virtue of our
relation to a consciousness of a type superior
to the human type. And meanwhile the good
of our loyalty is itself a perfectly concrete good,

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a good which is present to that higher experi
ence, wherein our cause is viewed in its truth,
as a genuine unity of life. And because of
this fact we can straightforwardly say : We
are loyal not for the sake of the good that we
privately get out of loyalty, but for the sake
of the good that the cause this higher unity
of experience gets out of this loyalty. Yet
our loyalty gives us what is, after all, our
supreme good, for it defines our true position
in the world of that social will wherein we live
and move and have our being.

I doubt not that such a view of human life,
such an assertion that the social will is a
concrete entity, just as real as we are, and of
still a higher grade of reality than ourselves,
will seem to many of you mythical enough.
Yet thus to view the unity of human life is,
after all, a common tendency of the loyal.
That fact I have illustrated in every lecture
of this course. That such a view need not be
mythical, that truth and reality can be con
ceived only in such terms as these, that our
philosophy of loyalty is a rational part of a

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LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY

philosophy which must view the whole world
as one unity of consciousness, wherein count
less lesser unities are synthesized, this is a
general philosophical thesis which I must next
briefly expound to you.

Ill

My exposition, as you see, must be, in any
case, an attempt to show that the inevitable
faith of the loyal - - their faith in their causes,
and in the real goodness of their causes has
truth, and since I must thus, in any case, dis
course of truth, I propose briefly to show you
that whoever talks of any sort of truth what
ever, be that truth moral or scientific, the
truth of common sense or the truth of a phi
losophy, inevitably implies, in all his asser
tions about truth, that the world of truth of
which he speaks is a world possessing a
rational and spiritual unity, is a conscious
world of experience, whose type of conscious
ness is higher in its level than is the type of
our human minds, but whose life is such that
our life belongs as part to this living whole.

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This world of truth is the one that you must
define, so I insist, if you are to regard any
proposition whatever as true, and are then
to tell, in a reasonable way, what you mean
by the truth of that proposition.

The world of truth is therefore essentially
a world such as that in whose reality the loyal
believe when they believe their cause to be
real. Moreover, this truth world has a good
ness about it, essentially like that which the
loyal attribute to their causes. Truth seek
ing and loyalty are therefore essentially the
same process of life merely viewed in two
different aspects. Whoever is loyal serves
what he takes to be a truth, namely, his cause.
On the other hand, whoever seeks truth for
its own sake fails of his business if he seeks
it merely as a barren abstraction, that has no
life in it. If a truth seeker knows his busi
ness, he is, then, in the sense of our definition,
serving a cause which unifies our human life
upon some higher level of spiritual being than
the present human level. He is therefore
essentially loyal. Truth seeking is a moral

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LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY

activity; and on the other hand, morality is
wholly inadequate unless the light of eternal
truth shines upon it.

This, I say, will be my thesis. Some of
you will call it very mystical, or at least a
very fantastic thesis. It is not so. It ought
to be viewed as a matter of plain sense. It is,
I admit, a thesis which many of the most dis
tinguished amongst my colleagues, who are
philosophers, nowadays view sometimes with
amusement, and sometimes with a notable
impatience. This way of regarding the world
of truth, which I have just defined as mine, is
especially and most vivaciously attacked by
my good friends, the pragmatists, a group
of philosophers who have of late been dis
posed to take truth under their especial pro
tection, as if she were in danger from the
tendency of some people who take her too
seriously.

When I mention pragmatism, I inevitably
bring to your minds the name of one whom
we all honor, the philosopher who last year
so persuasively stated, before the audience of

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this Institute, the pragmatist theory of philo
sophical method, and of the nature of truth.
It is impossible for me to do any justice, within
my limits, to the exposition which Professor
James gave of his own theory of truth. Yet
since the antithesis between his views and
those which I have now to indicate to you
may be in itself an aid to my own exposition,
I beg you to allow me to use, for the moment,
some of his assertions about the nature of
truth as a means of showing, by contrast, how
I find myself obliged to interpret the same
problem. The contrast is accompanied, after
all, by so much of deeper agreement that I
can well hope that my sketch of the current
situation in the philosophical controversies
about truth may not seem to you merely a
dreary report of differences of opinion.

Professor James, in discussing the nature
of truth, in his recent book on pragmatism,
begins, as some of you will remember, by
accepting the classic definition of truth as
the agreement of our ideas with reality.
Whoever knows or possesses a truth has,

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then, in his mind, an idea, an opinion, a judg
ment, or some complex of such states of
mind. If his views are true, then these his
ideas or opinions are in agreement with
something called reality. Thus, for instance,
if a loyal man believes his cause, say, his
friendship or his club or his nation, to be a
reality, and if his belief is true, his loyal opin
ion is in agreement with the real world. So
far, of course, all of you will accept the defi
nition of truth here in question.

Professor James now goes on to point out
that, in some cases, our ideas agree with what
we call real things by copying those things.
So, if, with shut eyes, you think of the clock
on the wall, your image of the clock is a copy
of its dial. But, as my colleague continues,
our power to copy real objects by ideas of our
own is obviously a very limited power. You
believe that you have at least some true ideas
about many objects which are far too complex
or too mysterious for you to copy them. Your
power to become sure that your ideas do copy
the constitution of anything whatever which

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exists outside of you is also very limited, be
cause, after all, you never get outside of your
own experience to see what the real things
would be if taken wholly in themselves.
Hence, on the whole, one cannot say that the
agreement of our ideas with reality which
constitutes their truth is essentially such as to
demand that our ideas should be copies. For
we believe that we have true ideas even when
we do not believe them to be copies.

Moreover (and herewith we approach a
consideration which is, for my colleague s
theory of truth, very essential), not only
does truth not consist merely in copying facts ;
but also truth cannot be defined in terms of
any other static or fixed relation between ideas
and facts. The only way to conceive that
agreement between ideas and facts which
constitutes truth is to think of the "practical
consequences" which follow from possessing
true ideas. "True ideas," in Professor
James s words, "lead us, namely, through the
acts and other ideas which they instigate, into
or up to or towards other parts of experience

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with which we feel all the while that the orig
inal ideas remain in agreement. The con
nections and transitions come to us, from
point to point, as being progressive, harmo
nious, satisfactory. This function of agree
able leading is what we mean by an idea s
verification." So far my colleague s words.
He goes on, in his account, to mention many
illustrations of the way in which the truth of
ideas is tested, both in the world of common
sense, and in the world of science, by the use
fulness, by the success, which attaches to the
following out of true ideas to their actual
empirical consequences. The wanderer lost
in the woods gets true ideas about his where
abouts whenever he hits upon experiences and
ideas which set him following the path which
actually leads him home. In science, hy
potheses are tested as to their truth, by con
sidering w r hat experiences they lead us to
anticipate, and by then seeing whether these
anticipations can be fulfilled in a satisfactory
way. "True," says Professor James, "is the
name for whatever idea starts the verification

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process." For instance, then, the verifiable
scientific hypothesis, if once tested by the
success of its results in experience, is in so far
declared true. And similarly, the idea of
following a given path in the woods in order
to get home is declared true, if you follow the
path and get home.

In consequence, every true idea is such in
so far as it is useful in enabling you to an
ticipate the sort of experience that you want ;
and every idea that is useful as a guide of
life is in so far true. The personal tests of
usefulness, as of truth, are for every one of
us personal and empirical. My own direct
tests of truth are of course thus limited to my
own experience. I find my own ideas true
just in so far as I find them guiding me to the
experience that I want to get. But of course,
as my colleague constantly insists, we give
credit, as social beings, to one another s veri
fications. Hence I regard as true many ideas
that I personally have not followed out to any
adequately experienced consequences. The
"overwhelmingly large" number of the ideas

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by which we live, "we let pass for true with
out attempting to verify." We do this, says
Professor James, "because it works to do so,
everything we know conspiring with the belief,
and nothing interfering." That is, we regard
as true those ideas which we personally find it
convenient, successful, expedient to treat as
verifiable, even though we never verify them.
The warrant of these unverifiable truths is,
however, once more, the empirical usefulness
of living as if they were verifiable. Truth
lives," says Professor James, "for the most
part on a credit system. . . . But this all
points to direct face-to-face verification some
where, without which the fabric of truth col
lapses like a financial system with no cash
basis whatever. You accept my verification
of one thing, I yours of another. We trade
on each other s truth. But beliefs verified
concretely by somebody are the posts of the
whole superstructure." The indirectly veri
fiable ideas, that is, the ideas which some
body else verifies, or even those which nobody
yet verifies, but which agree sufficiently with

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

verified ideas, we accept because it is advan
tageous to accept them. It is the same thing,
then, to say that an idea is true because it is
useful and to say that it is useful because it is
true.

Agreement with reality thus turns out, as
my colleague insists, "to be an affair of lead
ing, leading that is useful because it is into
quarters that contain objects that are im
portant." And my colleague s account of
truth culminates in these notable expressions :
The true/ to put it very briefly, is only the
expedient in the way of our thinking, just as
the right is only the expedient in the way of
our behaving." "Pragmatism faces forward
towards the future." That is, an idea is true
by virtue of its expedient outcome. "It pays
for our ideas to be validated, verified. Our
obligation to seek truth is part of our general
obligation to do what pays. The payment
true ideas bring are the sole why of our duty
to follow them."

The sum and substance of this theory of
truth, as you see, is that the truth of an idea

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is determined by its "success" in yielding
what my colleague frequently calls "the cash
values in terms of experience/ which appear
as consequences of holding this idea. These
values may either take the form of direct
verifications in terms of sensible facts, as
when one finds one s way out of the woods
and sees one s home; or else the form of
practically satisfying and expedient beliefs,
which clash with no sensible experience, and
which are personally acceptable to those w r ho
hold them. It is "expedient" to connect the
latter beliefs with sensible cash values when
you can. If you cannot turn them into such
cash, you are at liberty to hold them, but with
the conviction that, after all, the personally
expedient is the true.

In any case, as you see, whatever else truth
is, it is nothing static. It changes with the
expediencies of your experience. And there
fore those who conceive the realm of truth as
essentially eternal are the objects of my col
league s most charming philosophical fury.

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IV

We have, then, an authoritative exposition of
pragmatism before us. You must see that
this doctrine, whether it be a true doctrine,
or whether it be indeed simply for some
people an expedient doctrine, is certainly one
that concerns our philosophy of loyalty, now
that indeed we have reached the place where
the relation between loyalty and truth has
become, for us, a critically important relation.
May we venture to ask ourselves, then : Is
this pragmatism a fair expression of what we
mean by truth ?

In reply let me at once point out the
extent to which I personally agree with my
colleague, and accept his theory of truth.
I fully agree with him that whenever a man
asserts a truth, his assertion is a deed, a
practical attitude, an active acknowledgment
of some fact. I fully agree that the effort to
verify this acknowledgment by one s own
personal experience, and the attempt to find
truth in the form of a practical congruity

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between our assertions and our attained em
pirical results, is an effort which in our in
dividual lives inevitably accompanies and
sustains our every undertaking in the cause
of truth seeking. Modern pragmatism is not
indeed as original as it seems to suppose itself
to be in emphasizing such views. The whole
history of modern idealism is full of such asser
tions. I myself, as a teacher of philosophy,
have for years insisted upon viewing truth in
this practical way. I must joyously confess
to you that I was first taught to view the
nature of truth in this way when I was a
young student of philosophy; and I w^as
taught this by several great masters of modern
thought. These masters were Kant, Fichte,
Hegel, and Professor James himself, whose
lectures, as I heard them in my youth at the
Johns Hopkins University, and whose beau
tiful conversations and letters in later years,
inspired me with an insight that helped me,
rather against his own advice, to read my
German idealists aright, and to see what is,
after all, the eternal truth beneath all this

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pragmatism. For Professor James s prag
matism, despite its entertaining expressions
of horror of the eternal, actually does state
one aspect of eternal truth. It is, namely,
eternally true that all search for truth is a
practical activity, with an ethical purpose,
and tnat a purely theoretical truth, such as
should guide no significant active process, is a
barren absurdity. This, however, is so far
precisely what Fichte spent his life in teach
ing. Professor James taught me, as a stu
dent, much the same lesson ; and I equally
prize and honor all of my masters for that
lesson ; and I have been trying to live up to it
ever since I first began to study the nature of
truth.

So far, then, I am a pragmatist. And I
also fully agree that, if we ever get truth, the
attainment of truth means a living and prac
tical success in those active undertakings in
terms of which we have been trying to assert
and to verify our truth. I doubt not that
to say, "This is true," is the same as to say:
"The ideas by means of which I define this

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truth are the practically and genuinely suc
cessful ideas, the ideas such that, when I fol
low them, I really fulfil my deepest needs."
All this I not only admit; but I earnestly
insist that truth is an ethical concept; and I
thank from my heart the great pragmatist
who so fascinated his audience last year in
this place ; I thank him that he taught them
what, in my youth, he helped to teach me,
namely, that winning the truth means winning
the success which we need, and for which the
whole practical nature of our common hu
manity continually groans and travails to
gether in pain until now.

And yet, and yet all this still leaves open one
great question. When we seek truth, we
indeed seek successful ideas. But what, in
Heaven s name, constitutes success ? Truth-
seeking is indeed a practical endeavor. But
what, in the name of all the loyal, is the
goal of human endeavor ? Truth is a living
thing. We want leading and guidance.
"Lead, kindly light," thus we address the
truth. We are lost in the woods of time.

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We want the way, the truth, and the life.
For nothing else does all our science and
our common sense strive. But what is it to
have genuine abundance of life? For what
do we live ?

Here our entire philosophy of loyalty, so far
as it has yet been developed, comes to our aid.
The loyal, as we have said, are the only human
beings who can have any reasonable hope of
genuine success. If they do not succeed, then
nobody succeeds. And of course the loyal
do indeed live with a constant, although not
with an exclusive, reference to their own
personal experience and to that of other in
dividual men. They feel their present fas
cination for their cause. It thrills through
them. Their loyalty has, even for them, in
their individual capacity what Professor James
calls a cash value. And of course they like
to have their friends share such cash values.
Yet I ask you : Are the loyal seeking only the
mere collection of their private experiences

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LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY

of their personal thrills of fascination ? If
you hear loyal men say: "We are in this
business just for what we as individuals we
and our individual fellows can get out of it,"
do you regard that way of speech as an ade
quate expression of their really loyal spirit ?
When Arnold von Winkelried rushed on the
Austrian spears, did he naturally say : " Look
you, my friends, I seek, in experiential terms,
the cash value of my devotion ; see me
draw the cash." My colleague would of
course retort that the hero in question, accord
ing to the legend, said, as he died : " Make
way for liberty." He therefore wanted lib
erty, as one may insist, to get these cash values.
Yes, but liberty was no individual man, and
no mere heap of individual men. Liberty
was a cause, a certain superhuman unity of
the ideal life of a free community. It was
indeed expedient that one man should die for
the people. But the people also was an unio
mystica of many in one. For that cause the
hero died. And no man has ever yet experi
enced, in his private and individual life, the

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whole true cash value of that higher unity.
Nor will all the individual Swiss patriots, past,
present, or future, viewed as a mere collec
tion of creatures of a day, ever draw the cash
in question. If the cause exists, the treasure
exists, and is indeed a cash value upon a level
higher than that of our passing human life.
But loyalty does not live by selling its goods
for present cash in the temple of its cause.
Such pragmatism it drives out of the temple.
It serves, and worships, and says to the cause :
"Be thine the glory."

Loyalty, then, seeks success and from mo
ment to moment indeed thrills with a purely
fragmentary and temporary joy in its love of
its service. But the joy depends on a belief
in a distinctly superhuman type of unity of
life. And so you indeed cannot express the
value of your loyalty by pointing at the mere
heap of the joyous thrills of the various loyal
individuals. The loyal serve a real whole of
life, an experiential value too rich for any ex
pression in merely momentary terms.

Now, is it not very much so with our love of

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any kind of truth ? Of course, we mortals
seek for whatever verification of our truths
we can get in the form of present success.
But can you express our human definition of
truth in terms of any collection of our human
experiences of personal expediency?

Well, as to our concept of truth, let us con
sider a test case by way of helping ourselves
to answer this question. Let us suppose that
a witness appears, upon some witness-stand,
and objects to taking the ordinary oath, be
cause he has conscientious scruples, due to
the fact that he is a recent pragmatist, who
has a fine new definition of truth, in terms of
which alone he can be sworn. Let us suppose
him, hereupon, to be granted entire liberty
to express his oath in his own way. Let him
accordingly say, using, with technical scrupu
losity, my colleague s definition of truth: "I
promise to tell whatever is expedient and
nothing but what is expedient, so help me fu
ture experience." I ask you : Do you think
that this witness has expressed, with adequacy,
that view of the nature of truth that you really

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wish a witness to have in mind ? Of course,
if he were a typical pragmatist, you would in
deed be delighted to hear his testimony on the
witness-stand or anywhere else. But would
you accept his formula?

But let me be more precise as to the topic
of this witness s possible testimony. I will
use for the purpose Kant s famous case.
Somebody, now dead, let us suppose, has
actually left with the witness a sum of money
as a wholly secret deposit to be some time
returned. No written record was made of the
transaction. No evidence exists that can in
future be used to refute the witness if he denies
the transaction and keeps the money. The
questions to be asked of the witness relate,
amongst other things, to whatever it may be
that he believes himself to know about the
estate of the deceased. I now ask, not what
his duty is, but simply what it is that he ra
tionally means to do in case he really intends
to tell the truth about that deposit. Does
he take merely the "forward-looking" atti
tude of my colleague s . pragmatism ? Does

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LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY

he mean merely to predict, as expedient, cer
tain consequences which he expects to result
either to himself or to the heirs of the estate ?
Of course his testimony will have consequences.
But is it these which he is trying to predict ?
Are they his true object ? Or does the truth
of his statement mean the same as the expe
diency, either to himself or to the heirs, of any
consequences whatever which may follow from
his statement? Does the truth of his state
ment about the deposit even mean the merely
present empirical fact that he now feels a belief
in this statement or that he finds it just now
congruent with the empirical sequences of his
present memories ? No, for the witness is not
trying merely to tell how he feels. He is try
ing to tell the truth about the deposit. And the
witness s belief is not the truth of his belief.
Even his memory is not the truth to which he
means to be a witness. And the future con
sequences of his making a true statement are
for the witness irrelevant, since they are for
the law and the heirs to determine. Yet one
means something perfectly definite by the

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truth of the testimony of that witness. And
that truth is simply inexpressible in such terms
as those which my colleague employs. Yet the
truth here in question is a simple truth about
the witness s own personal past experience.

Now, such a case is only one of countless
cases where we are trying to tell the truth
about something which we all regard as being,
in itself, a matter of genuine and concrete
experience, while nevertheless we do not mean,
" It is expedient just now for me to think this,"
nor yet, "I predict such and such consequences
for my own personal experience, or for the
future experience of some other individual
man; and these predicted consequences con
stitute the truth of my present assertion."
I say there are countless such cases where the
truth that we mean is empirical indeed, but
transcends all such expediencies and personal
consequences. The very assertion, "Human
experience, taken as a totality of facts, exists,"
is a momentous example of just such an asser
tion. We all believe that assertion. If that
assertion is not actually true, then our whole

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LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY

frame of natural science, founded as it is on the
common experience of many observers, crum
bles into dust, our common sense world is
nothing, business and society are alike illu
sions, loyalty to causes is meaningless. Now
that assertion, "Human experience, that is,
the totality of the experiences of many men,
really exists," is an assertion which you and I
regard as perfectly true. Yet no individual
man ever has verified, or ever will verify, that
assertion. For no man, taken as this indi
vidual man, experiences the experience of any
body but himself. Yet we all regard that as
sertion as true.

My colleague, of course, would say, as in fact
he has often said, that his assertion is one of
the numerous instances of that process of
trading on credit which he so freely illustrates.
We do not verify this assertion. But we
accept it on credit as verifiable. However,
the credit simile is a dangerous one here, so
long as one conceives that the verification
which would pay the cash would be a payment
in the form of such human experience as

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

you and I possess. For the assertion, "The
experience of many men exists," is an assertion
that is essentially un verifiable by any one man.
If the "cash value" of the assertion means,
then, its verifiability by any man, then the
credit in question is one that simply cannot
be turned into such cash by any conceivable
process, occurring in our individual lives,
since the very idea of the real existence of
the experience of many men excludes, by its
definition, the direct presence of this experience
of various men within the experience of any
one of these men. The credit value in ques
tion would thus be a mere fiat value, so long
as the only cash values are those of the expe
riences of individual men, and the truth of
our assertion would mean simply that we find
it expedient to treat as verifiable what we
know cannot be verified. Hereupon, of course,
we should simply be trading upon currency
that has no cash value. Whoever does verify
the fact that the experience of many men
exists, if such a verifier there be, is a super
human being, an union of the empirical lives

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LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY

of many men in the complex of a single expe
rience. And if our credit of the assertion that
many men exist is convertible into cash at all,
that cash is not laid up where the moth and
rust of our private human experience doth from
moment to moment corrupt the very data that
we see; but is laid up in a realm where our
experiences, past, present, future, are the ob
ject of a conspectus that is not merely temporal
and transient. Now all the natural sciences
make use of the persuasion that the experiences
of various men exist, and that there is a unity
of such experiences. This thesis, then, is no
invention of philosophers.

My colleague, in answer, would of course
insist that as a fact you and I are now believing
that many men exist, and that human experi
ence in its entirety exists, merely because, in the
long run, we find that this belief is indeed
congruous with our current and purely per
sonal experience, and is therefore an expedi
ent idea of ours. But I, in answer, insist that
common sense well feels this belief to be indeed
from moment to moment expedient, and yet

z 337

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

clearly distinguishes between that expediency
and the truth which common sense all the while
attributes to the belief. The distinction is pre
cisely the one which my fancied illustration of
the pragmatist on the witness-stand has sug
gested. It is a perfectly universal distinction
and a commonplace one. Tell me, "This
opinion is true," and whatever you are talking
about I may agree or disagree or doubt; yet
in any case you have stated a momentous issue.
But tell me, "I just now find this belief
expedient, it feels to me congruous" and you
have explicitly given me just a scrap of your
personal biography, and have told me no other
truth whatever than a truth about the present
state of your feelings.

If, however, you emphasize my colleague s
wording to the effect that a truth is such because
it proves to be an idea that is expedient "in
the long run," I once more ask you : When
does a man experience the whole of the real
facts about the "long run"? At the begin
ning of the long run, when the end is not yet,
or at the end, when, perhaps, he forgets, like

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LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY

many older men, what were once the expe
diencies of his youth ? What decides the truth
about the long run? My exalted moments,
when anything that I like seems true, or my
disappointed moments, when I declare that I
have always had bad luck ? To appeal to
the genuinely real "long run" is only to appeal
in still another form to a certain ideally fair
conspectus of my own whole life, a conspec
tus which I, in my private human experience,
never get. Whoever gets the conspectus of
my whole life, to see what, in the long run, is
indeed for me expedient, - - whoever, I say,
gets that conspectus, if such abeing there indeed
is, --is essentially superhuman in his type of
consciousness. For he sees what I only get
in the form of an idea ; namely, the true sense
and meaning of my life.

In vain, then, does one try adequately to de
fine the whole of what we mean by truth either
in terms of our human feelings of expediency
or in terms of our instantaneous thrills of joy
in success, or in terms of any other verifications
that crumble as the instant flies. All such

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

verifications we use, just as we use whatever
perishes. Any such object is a fragment, but
we want the whole. Truth is itself a cause,
and is largely as one must admit, for us mortals,
just now, what we called, in our last lecture,
a lost cause else how should these prag-
matists be able thus to imagine a vain thing,
and call that truth which is but the crumbling
expediency of the moment ? Our search for
truth is indeed a practical process. The
attainment of truth means success. Our veri
fications, so far as we ever get them, are mo
mentary fragments of that success. But the
genuine success that we demand is an ethical
success, of precisely the type which all the
loyal seek, when they rejoice in giving all for
their cause.

VI

But you will now all the more eagerly de
mand in what sense we can ever get any war
rant for saying that we know any truth what
ever. In seeking truth we do not seek the mere
crumbling successes of the passing instants
of human life. We seek a city out of sight.

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LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY

What we get of success within our passing
experience is rationally as precious to us as it is,
just because we believe that attainment to be
a fragment of an essentially superhuman suc
cess, which is won in the form of a higher expe
rience than ours, a conspectus wherein our
human experiences are unified. But what
warrant have we for this belief?

I will tell you how I view the case. We
need unity of life. In recognizing that need
my own pragmatism consists. Now, we never
find unity present to our human experience in
more than a fragmentary shape. We get
hints of higher unity. But only the frag
mentary unity is won at any moment of our
lives. We therefore form ideas -- very fallible
ideas of some unity of experience, an unity
such as our idea of any science or any art or
any united people or of any community or of
any other cause, any other union of many hu
man experiences in one, defines. Now, if our
ideas are in any case indeed true, then such an
unity is as a fact successfully experienced upon
some higher level than ours, and is experienced

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

in some conspectus of life which wins what we
need, which approves our loyalty, which fulfils
our rational will, and which has in its whole
ness what we seek. And then we ourselves
with all our ideas and strivings are in and of
this higher unity of life. Our loyalty to truth
is a hint of this unity. Our transient successes
are fragments of the true success. But sup
pose our ideas about the structure of this higher
unity to be false in any of their details. Sup
pose, namely, any of our causes to be wrongly
viewed by us. Then there is still real that
state of facts, whatever it is, which, if just now
known to us, would show us this falsity of
our various special ideas. Now, only an expe
rience, a consciousness of some system of con
tents, could show the falsity of any idea. Hence
this real state of facts, this constitution of the
genuine universe, whatever it is, must again be
a reality precisely in so far as it is also a con
spectus of facts of experience.

We therefore already possess at least one
true idea, precisely in so far as we say: "The
facts of the world are what they are ; the real

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LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY

universe exposes our errors and makes them
errors." And when we say this, we once more
appeal to a conspectus of experience in which
ours is included. For I am in error only in
case my present ideas about the true facts
of the whole world of experience are out of
concord with the very meaning that I myself
actively try to assign to these ideas. My ideas
are in any detail false, only if the very expe
rience to which I mean to appeal, contains in
its conspectus contents which I just now im
perfectly conceive. In any case, then, the
truth is possessed by precisely that whole of
experience which I never get, but to which
my colleague also inevitably appeals when he
talks of the "long run," or of the experiences
of humanity in general.

Whatever the truth, then, or the falsity of
any of my special convictions about this or that
fact may be, the real world, which refutes my
false present ideas in so far as they clash with
its wholeness, and which confirms them just
in so far as they succeed in having significant
relations to its unity, this real world, I say,

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is a conspectus of the whole of experience.
And this whole of experience is in the closest
real relation to my practical life, precisely in
so far as, for me, the purpose of my life is to
get into unity with the whole universe, and pre
cisely in so far as the universe itself is just that
conspectus of experience that we all mean to
define and to serve whatever we do, or what
ever we say.

But the real whole conspectus of experience,
the real view of the totality of life, the real
expression of that will to live in and for the
whole, which every assertion of truth and every
loyal deed expresses -- well, it must be a con
spectus that includes whatever facts are indeed
facts, be they past, present, or future. I call
this whole of experience an eternal truth. I do
not thereby mean, as my colleague seems to
imagine, that the eternal first exists, and that
then our life in time comes and copies that
eternal order. I mean simply that the whole
of experience includes all temporal happenings,
contains within itself all changes, and, since
it is the one whole that we all want and need,

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succeeds in so far as it supplements all failures,
accepts all, even the blindest of services, and
wins what we seek. Thus winning it is prac
tically good and worthy.

But if one insists, How do you know all
this ? I reply : I know simply that to try to
deny the reality of this whole of truth is simply
to reaffirm it. Any special idea of mine may
be wrong, even as any loyal deed may fail, or
as any cause may become, to human vision, a
lost cause. But to deny that there is truth,
or that there is a real world, is simply to say
that the whole truth is that there is no whole
truth, and that the real fact is that there is
no fact real at all. Such assertions are plain
self-contradictions. And on the other hand, by
the term "real world," defined as it is for us by
our ideal needs, we mean simply that whole of
experience in which we live, and in unity with
which we alone succeed.

Loyalty, then, has its own metaphysic.
This metaphysic is expressed in a view of
things which conceives our experience as bound
up in a real unity with all experience, an

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

unity which is essentially good, and in which
all our ideas possess their real fulfilment and
success. Such a view is true, simply because
if you deny its truth you reaffirm that very
truth under a new form.

Truth, meanwhile, means, as pragmatism
asserts, the fulfilment of a need. But we all
need the superhuman, the city out of sight, the
union with all life, the essentially eternal.
This need is no invention of the philosophers.
It is the need which all the loyal feel, whether
they know it or not, and whether they call
themselves pragmatists or not. To define this
need as pragmatism in its recent forms has
done, to reduce truth to expediency, is to go
about crying cash, cash, in a realm where there
is no cash of the sort that loyalty demands,
that every scientific inquiry presupposes, and
that only the unity of the experiences of many
in one furnishes.

If we must, then, conceive recent pragmatism
under the figure of a business enterprise, a
metaphor which my colleague s phraseology
so insistently invites, I am constrained there-

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fore to sum up its position thus : First, with
a winning clearness, and with a most honor
able frankness it confesses bankruptcy, so
far as the actually needed cash payments of
significant truth are concerned. Secondly,
it nevertheless declines to go into the hands
of any real receiver, for it is not fond of any
thing that appears too absolute. And thirdly,
it proposes simply and openly to go on doing
business under the old style and title of the
truth. "After all," it says, "are we not, every
one of us, fond of credit values?"

But I cannot conceive the position of the
loyal to be, in fact, so hopelessly embarrassed
as this. The recent pragmatists themselves
are, in fact, practically considered very loyal
lovers of genuine truth. They simply have
mistaken the true state of their accounts. We
all know, indeed, little enough. But the loyal
man, I think, whether he imagines himself
to be a recent pragmatist or not, has a ra
tional right to say this: My cause partakes
of the nature of the only truth and reality that
there is. My life is an effort to manifest such

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

eternal truth, as well as I can, in a series of
temporal deeds. I may serve my cause ill.
I may conceive it erroneously. I may lose it
in the thicket of this world of transient expe
rience. My every human deed may involve
a blunder. My mortal life may seem one
long series of failures. But I know that my
cause liveth. My true life is hid with the
cause and belongs to the eternal.

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VIII

LOYALTY AND RELIGION

LECTURE VIII

LOYALTY AND RELIGION

TT7E began these lectures with a confessedly
* inadequate definition of loyalty. At the
last time we laid a basis for anew definition of
loyalty. In this concluding lecture, we are to
develop that definition, and to draw conclusions
regarding the relation of loyalty to religion.
Both enterprises will require a further develop
ment of our theory of truth.

Loyalty, so we said at the outset, is the will
ing and thoroughgoing devotion of a person
to a cause. We defined a cause as something
that unifies many human lives in one. Our
intent in making these definitions was mainly
practical. Our philosophy of loyalty was and
is intended to be a practical philosophy. We
used our definition first to help us to find out

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

the purpose of life, and the supreme good which
human beings can seek for themselves. We
found this good to be, indeed, of a paradoxical
seeming. It was a good found only by an act
of sacrifice. We then developed the concep
tion of loyalty to loyalty, and learned that,
with this means of defining the one cause which
is worthy of all men s devotion, we could unify
and simplify the chaotic code of our conven
tional morality, could do full justice to the
demands of a rational ethical individualism,
and could leave to every man his right and his
duty to choose some special personal cause of
his own, while we could yet state the ideal of
a harmony of all human causes in one all-em
bracing cause. Upon this basis we also could
form a theory of conscience, a theory which
views conscience at once as rational and uni
versal in its authority, and yet as individual
in its expression in the life of each man, so
that every man s conscience remains his own,
and is, to himself, in many ways, mysterious;
while the whole business of any man s conscience
is, nevertheless, to direct that man to find his

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LOYALTY AND RELIGION

individual place in the one, universal, rational,
moral order.

Hereupon we illustrated our theory of loyalty
by applying it to a study of some of our own
national problems. And next, our account
of the practice of loyalty culminated in a doc
trine of the nature of training for loyalty.
Here we found the great paradox of loyalty
afresh illustrated. Loyalty wins not only by
sacrifice, but also by painful labor, and by the
very agony of defeat. In this our human world
the lost causes have proved themselves, in
history, to be the most fruitful causes. In
sum, loyalty is trained both through the pres
ence of personal leaders, and through that
idealization of our causes which adversity
nourishes, which death illumines, and which
the defeats of present time may render all the
clearer and more ideally fascinating.

All these results showed us that loyalty has
about it a character such as forbids us, after
all, to interpret the true good of loyalty in terms
of our merely individual human experiences.
Man discovers, indeed, even within the limits

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of his own personal experience, that loyalty
is his ethical destiny, and that without it he
can win no peace ; while, with loyalty once in
possession of his active powers, he seems to
himself to have solved the personal problem
of the purpose of his life. But loyalty thus
appears, after all, in the individual life, in a
deeply mysterious form. It says to a man :
"Your true good can never be won and veri
fied by you in terms to which the present form
and scope of our human experience is adequate.
The best that you can get lies in self -surrender,
and in your personal assurance that the cause
to which you surrender yourself is indeed good.
But your cause, if it is indeed a reality, has a
good about it which no one man, and no mere
collection of men, can ever verify. This good
of the cause is essentially superhuman in its
type, even while it is human in its embodiment.
For it belongs to an union of men, to a whole of
human life which transcends the individuality
of any man, and which is not to be found as
something belonging to any mere collection of
men. Let your supreme good, then, be this,

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that you regard the cause as real, as good, and
that, if the cause be lost to any merely human
sight, you hold it to be nevertheless living in
its own realm, not apart, indeed, from human
life, but in the form of the fulfilment of many
human lives in one."

Now, this mysterious speech of loyalty im
plies something which is not only moral, but
also metaphysical. Purely practical considera
tions, then, a study of our human needs, an
ideal of the business of life, --these inevi
tably lead us into a region which is more than
merely a realm of moral activities. This
region is either one of delusions or else one of
spiritual realities of a level higher than is
that of our present individual human expe
rience.

In the last lecture we undertook to consider
this larger realm of spiritual unities which
must be real in case our loyalty is not based
upon illusion. And we attempted to sketch
a general theory of truth which might show us
that such spiritual unities are indeed realities,
and are presupposed by our every effort to

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

define truth. Thus our ethical theory has
transformed itself into a general philosophical
doctrine; and loyalty now appears to us not
only as a guide of life but as a revelation of our
relation to a realm which we have been obliged
to define as one of an eternal and all-embracing
unity of spiritual life.

We have called this realm of true life, and of
genuine and united experience, this realm
which, if our argument at the last time was
sound, includes our lives in that very whole
which constitutes the real universe, --we have
called this realm, I say, an eternal world, -
eternal, simply because, according to our
theory, it includes all temporal happenings
and strivings in the conspectus of a single con
sciousness, and fulfils all our rational purposes
together, and is all that we seek to be. For,
as we argued, this realm of reality is conscious,
is united, is self-possessed, and is perfected
through the very wealth of the ideal sacrifices
and of the loyal devotion which are united so
as to constitute its fulness of being. In view
of the philosophy that was thus sketched, I

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LOYALTY AND RELIGION

now propose a new definition of loyalty ; and
I say that this definition results from all of our
previous study : Loyalty is the will to manifest,
so far as is possible, the Eternal, that is, the
conscious and superhuman unity of life, in J
the form of the acts of an individual Self. Or,
if you prefer to take the point of view of an
individual human self, if you persist in looking
at the world just as we find it in our ordinary
experience, and if you regard the metaphysical
doctrine just sketched merely as an ideal theory
of life, and not as a demonstrable philosophy,
I can still hold to my definition of loyalty
by borrowing a famous phrase from the dear
friend and colleague some of whose views I
at the last time opposed. I can, then, simply
state my new definition of loyalty in plainer
and more directly obvious terms thus : Loyalty
is the Will to Believe in something eternal, and
to express that belief in the practical life of
a human being.

This, I say, is my new definition of loyalty,
and in its metaphysical form, it is my final
definition. Let me expound it further, and

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

let me show a little more in detail how it re
sults from the whole course of our inquiry,

II

However kindly you may have followed the
discussion of my last lecture, some of you will
feel doubts as to the theory of truth and of
reality which I opposed to the doctrines of
recent pragmatism, and which I now lay at
the basis of my final definition of loyalty. I
approached my own theory by the way of a
polemic against my colleague s recently stated
views regarding the nature of truth. But
polemic often hinders our appreciation of some
aspects of the questions at issue, even while it
may help us to emphasize others. So let me
now point out, apart from a polemic against
other theories of truth, what is my main mo
tive for viewing the real world as I do, and why
I suppose that viewing the world as I do helps
us to understand better the business of loyalty.

People who have faith in this or in that form
of superhuman and significant reality often
ask what they can do to turn their faith into

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LOYALTY AND RELIGION

something that more resembles clear insight.
Shall they look into the evidences that are
adduced in favor of this or of that miraculous
story ? Shall they themselves seek for the
miraculous in their own personal experience?
Will psychical research throw any light on the
mysteries of being? Or, perhaps, will some
sort of special mystical training reveal the
higher truth ? What is the way that leads
towards the spiritual world ? And thus those
who doubt whether there are such higher reali
ties to be found still sometimes try to get rid
of these doubts by various appeals either to
more or less magical arts, or to extraordinary
personal experiences, or to mystical transforma
tions of their personal life.

Now, whatever may be said of wonders, or of
mystical revelations, our philosophy of loyalty
is naturally interested in pointing out a road to
the spiritual world, if, indeed, there be such a
world, a road, I say, which has a plain rela
tion to our everyday moral life. And it seems
to me, both that there is a genuinely spiritual
world, and that there is a path of inquiry which

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

can lead from such a practical faith in the
higher world as loyalty embodies in its deeds,
to a rational insight into the general constitu
tion of this higher realm. I do not offer my
opinions upon this subject as having any
authority. I can see no farther through stone
walls than can my fellow, and I enjoy no special
revelations from any superhuman realm. But
I ask you, as thoughtful people, to consider
what your ordinary life, as rational beings,
implies as its basis and as its truth.

What I was expounding at the close of my
last lecture was a view of things which seems
to me to be implied in any attempt to express,
in a reasonable way, where we stand in our
universe.

We all of us have to admit, I think, that our
daily life depends upon believing in realities
which are, in any case, just as truly beyond
the scope of our ordinary individual experience
as any spiritual realm could possibly be. We
live by believing in one another s minds as
realities. We give credit to countless reports,
documents, and other evidences of present

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LOYALTY AND RELIGION

and past facts ; and we do all this, knowing
that such credit cannot be adequately verified
by any experience such as an individual man
can obtain. Now, the usual traditional ac
count of all these beliefs of ours is that they
are forced upon us, by some reality which is,
as people say, wholly independent of our
knowledge, which exists by itself apart from
our experience, and which may be, therefore,
entirely alien in its nature to any of our human
interests and ideals.

But modern philosophy, a philosophy in
whose historical course of development our
recent pragmatism is only a passing incident,
that philosophy which turns upon analyzing the
bases of our knowledge, and upon reflectively
considering what our human beliefs and ideas
are intended to mean and to accomplish,
has taught us to see that we can never deal with
any wholly independent reality. The recent
pragmatists, as I understand them, are here
in full and conscious agreement with my own
opinion. We can deal with no world which is
out of relation to our experience. On the con-

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

trary, the real world is known to us in terms
of our experience, is defined for us by our
ideas, and is the object of our practical endeav
ors. Meanwhile, to declare anything real
is to assert that it has its place in some realm
of experience, be this experience human or
superhuman. To declare that anything what
ever is a fact, is simply to assert that some prop
osition, which you or I or some other think
ing being can express in the form of intelligible
ideas, is a true proposition. And the truth
of propositions itself is nothing dead, is
nothing independent of ideas and of expe
rience, but is simply the successful fulfilment
of some demand, a demand which you can
express in the form of an assertion, and which
is fulfilled in so far, and only in so far, as some
region of live experience contains what meets
that demand. Meanwhile, every proposition,
every assertion that anybody can make, is a
deed; and every rational deed involves, in
effect, an assertion of a fact. If the prodigal
son says, "I will arise and go to my father,"
he even thereby asserts something to be true

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about himself, his father, and his father s
house. If an astronomer or a chemist or a
statistician or a man of business reports "this
or this is a fact," he even thereby performs a
deed, an act having an ideal meaning, and
embodying a live purpose; and he further
declares that the constitution of experience is
such as to make this deed essentially reason
able, successful, and worthy to be accepted
by every man.

The real world is therefore not something
independent of us. It is a world whose stuff,
so to speak, whose content, is of the nature
of experience, whose structure meets, validates,
and gives warrant to our active deeds, and
whose whole nature is such that it can be inter
preted in terms of ideas, propositions, and
conscious meanings, while in turn it gives to
our fragmentary ideas and to our conscious
life whatever connected meaning they possess.
Whenever I have purposes and fail, so far,
to carry them out, that is because I have not
yet found the true way of expressing my own
relation to reality. On the other hand, pre-
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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

cisely in so far as I have understood some
whole of reality, I have carried out successfully
some purpose of mine.

There is, then, no merely theoretical truth,
and there is no reality foreign, in its nature,
to experience. Whoever actually lives the
whole conscious life such as can be lived out
with a definitely reasonable meaning, such
a being, obviously superhuman in his grade of
consciousness, not only knows the real world,
but is the real world. Whoever is conscious
of the whole content of experience possesses
all reality. And our search for reality is
simply an effort to discover what the whole
fabric of experience is into which our human
experience is woven, what the system of truth
is in which our partial truths have their place,
what the ideally significant life is for the sake
of which every deed of ours is undertaken.
When we try to find out what the real world is,
we are simply trying to discover the sense of
our own individual lives. And we can define
that sense of our lives only in terms of a con
scious life in which ours is included, in which

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our ideas get their full meaning expressed, and
in which what we fail to carry out to the full
is carried out to the full.

Ill

Otherwise stated, when I think of the whole
world of facts, the " real world, " - I inevi
tably think of something that is my own world,
precisely in so far as that world is any object
of any reasonable idea of mine. It is true, of
course, that, in forming an idea of my world of
facts, I do not thereby give myself, at this in
stant, the least right to spin out of my inner
consciousness any adequate present ideas of
the detail of the contents of my real world.
In thinking of the real world, I am indeed think
ing of the whole of that very system of expe
rience in which my experience is bound up,
and in which I, as an individual, have my
very limited and narrow place. But just now
I am not in possession of that whole. I have
to work for it and wait for it, and faithfully to
be true to it. As a creature living along, from
moment to moment, in time, I therefore indeed

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have to wait ignorantly enough for coming
experience. I have to use as I can my fallible
memory in trying to find out about my own
past experience. I have no way of verifying
what your experience is, except by using tests
- and again the extremely fallible tests
which we all employ in our social life. I need
the methods of the sciences of experience to
guide me in the study of whatever facts fall
within their scope. I use those practical and
momentary successes upon which recent prag
matism insists, whenever I try to get a concrete
verification of my opinions. And so far I
stand, and must rightly stand, exactly where
any man of common sense, any student of a
science, any plain man, or any learned man
stands. I am a fallible mortal, simply trying
to find my way as I can in the thickets of ex
perience.

And yet all this my daily life, my poor efforts
to remember and to predict, my fragmentary
inquiries into this or that matter of science or
of business, my practical acknowledgment
of your presence as real facts in the real

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LOYALTY AND RELIGION

world of experience, my personal definition
of the causes to which I devote myself, these
are all undertakings that are overruled, and
that are rendered significant, simply in so far
as they are reasonable parts of one all-embrac
ing enterprise. This enterprise is my active
attempt to find out my true place in the real
world. But now I can only define my real
world by conceiving it in terms of experience.
I can find my place in the world only by dis
covering where I stand in the whole system
of experience. For what I mean by a fact
is something that somebody finds. Even a
merely possible fact is something only in so
far as somebody actually could find it. And
the sense in which it is an actual fact that
somebody could find in his experience a de
terminate fact, is a sense which again can only
be defined in terms of concrete, living, and not
merely possible experience, and in terms of
some will or purpose expressed in a con
scious life. Even possible facts, then, are
really possible only in so far as something is
actually experienced, or is found by some-

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

body. Whatever is real, then, be it distant or
near, past or future, present to your mind or
to mine, a physical fact or a moral fact, a fact
of our possible human experience, or a fact of
a superhuman type of experience, a purpose,
a desire, a natural object or an ideal object, a
mechanical system or a value, whatever, I
say, is real, is real as a content present to some
conscious being. Therefore, when I inquire
about the real world, I am simply asking what
contents of experience, human or superhuman,
are actually and consciously found by some
body. My inquiries regarding facts, of what
ever grade the facts may be, are therefore
inevitably an effort to find out what the
world s experience is. In all my common
sense, then, in all my science, in all my social
life, I am trying to discover what the universal
conscious life which constitutes the world con
tains as its contents, and views as its own.

But even this is not the entire story of my
place in the real world. For I cannot inquire
about facts without forming my own ideas
of these facts. In so far as my ideas are true,

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LOYALTY AND RELIGION

my own personal ideas are therefore active
processes that go on within the conscious life
of the world. If my ideas are true, they
succeed in agreeing with the very world con
sciousness that they define. But this agree
ment, this success, if itself it is a fact at all,
is once more a fact of experience, - - yet not
merely of my private experience, since I
myself never personally find, within the limits
of my own individual experience, the success
that every act of truth seeking demands. If
I get the truth, then, at any point of my life,
my success is real only in so far as some con
scious life, which includes my ideas and my
efforts, and which also includes the very facts
of the world whereof I am thinking, actually
observes my success, in the form of a conspec
tus of the world s facts, and of my own efforts
to find and to define them.

In so far, then, as I get the truth about the
world, I myself am a fragmentary conscious
life that is included within the conscious con
spectus of the world s experience, and that is
in one self-conscious unity with that world

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

consciousness. And it is in this unity with
the world consciousness that I get my success,
and am in concord with the truth.

But of course any particular idea of mine,
regarding the world, or regarding any fact in
the world, may be false. However, this pos
sibility of my error is itself a real situation of
mine, and involves essentially the same rela
tion between the world and myself which
obtains in case I have true ideas. For I can
be in error about an object only in case I
really mean to agree with that object, and to
agree with it in a way which only my own
purposes, in seeking this agreement, can pos
sibly define. It is only by virtue of my own
undertakings that I can fail in my un
dertakings. It is only because, after all, I
am loyal to the world s whole truth that I
can so express myself in fallible ideas, and in
fragmentary opinions that, as a fact, I may,
at any moment, undertake too much for my
own momentary success to be assured, so that
I can indeed in any one of my assertions fail
justly to accord with that world consciousness

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which I am all the while trying to interpret
in my own transient way. But when I thus
fail, I momentarily fail to interpret my place in
the very world consciousness whose life I am
trying to define. But my failure, when and
in so far as it occurs, is once more a fact, -
and therefore a fact for the world s con
sciousness. If I blunder, but am sincere, if I
think myself right, but am not right, then my
error is a fact for a consciousness which in
cludes my fallible attempts to be loyal to the
truth, but which sees how they just now lose
present touch with their true cause. Seeing
this my momentary defeat, the world con
sciousness sees, however, my loyalty, and in its
conspectus assigns, even to my fragmentary
attempts at truth, their genuine place in the
single unity of the world s consciousness. My
very failure, then, like every loyal failure, is
still a sort of success. It is an effort to define
my place in the unity of the world s conspec
tus of all conscious life. I cannot fall out of
that unity. I cannot flee from its presence.
And I err only as the loyal may give up their

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

life for their cause. Whether I get truth,
then, or whether I err in detail, my loyal
search for truth insures the fact that I am in
a significant unity with the world s conscious
life.

The thesis that the world is one whole and
a significant whole of conscious life is, for
these reasons, a thesis which can only be
viewed as an error, by reinstating this very
assertion under a new form. For any error
of mine concerning the world is possible only
in so far as I really mean to assert the truth
about the world; and this real meaning of
mine can exist only as a fact within the
conspectus of consciousness for which the
real whole world exists, and within which I
myself live.

This, then, in brief, is my own theory of
truth. This is why I hold this theory to be
no fantastic guess about what may be true,
but a logically inevitable conclusion about
how every one of us, wise or ignorant, is ac
tually defining his own relation to truth,
whether he knows the fact or not. I ex-

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pressed my theory at the last time in terms of
a polemic against the recent pragmatists ; but
as a fact their view, in its genuine and deeper
meaning, is no more opposed to mine than
my young Russian s vehement protest against
loyalty, quoted in my second lecture, was, in
its true spirit, opposed to my own view. My
young Russian, you may remember, hated
what he took to be loyalty, just because he
was so loyal. And even so my friends, the
recent pragmatists, reassert my theory of truth
even in their every attempt to deny it. For,
amongst other things, they assert that their
own theory of truth is actually true. And
that assertion implies just such a conspectus
of all truth in one view, just such a con
spectus as I too assert.

IV

We first came in sight of this theory of
truth, in these discussions, for a purely prac
tical reason. Abstract and coldly intellectual
as the doctrine, when stated as I have just
stated it, may appear, we had our need to

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ask what truth is, because we wanted to know
whether the loyal are right in supposing, as
they inevitably do suppose, that their per
sonal causes, and that their cause of causes,
namely, universal loyalty, that any such
causes, I say, possess genuine foundation in
truth. Loyalty, as we found, is a practical ser
vice of superhuman objects. For our causes
transcend expression in terms of our single
lives. If the cause lives, then all conscious moral
life even our poor human life is in unity
with a superhuman conscious life, in which
we ourselves dwell ; and in this unity we win, in
so far as we are loyal servants of our cause, a
success which no transient human experience
of ours, no joyous thrill of the flying moment,
no bitterness of private defeat and loss, can
do more or less than to illustrate, to illumine,
or to idealize.

We asked: Is this faith of the loyal in
their causes a pathetic fallacy ? Our theory
of truth has given us a general answer to
this intensely practical question. The loyal
try to live in the spirit. But, if thereupon

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they merely open their eyes to the nature
of the reasonable truth, they see that it is in
the spirit only that they do or can live. They
would be living in this truth, as mere passing
fragments of conscious life, as mere blind
series of mental processes, even if they were
not loyal. For all life, howe er dark and frag
mentary, is either a blind striving for con
scious unity with the universal life of which
it is a fragment, or else, like the life of the
loyal, is a deliberate effort to express such a
striving in the form of a service of a super-
hum&n cause. And all lesser loyalties, and
all serving of imperfect or of evil causes, are
but fragmentary forms of the service of the
cause of universal loyalty. To serve uni
versal loyalty is, however, to view the interests
of all conscious life as one; and to do this is
to regard all conscious life as constituting just
such an unity as our theory of truth requires.
Meanwhile, since truth seeking is indeed it
self a practical activity, what we have stated
in our theory of truth is itself but an aspect
of the very life that the loyal are leading.

375

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

Whoever seeks any truth is loyal, for he is
determining his life by reference to a life which
transcends his own. And he is loyal to loy
alty; for whatever truth you try to discover
is, if true, valid for everybody, and is there
fore worthy of everybody s loyal recognition.
The loyal, then, are truth seekers; and the
truth seekers are loyal. And all of them live
for the sake of the unity of all life. And this
unity includes us all, but is superhuman.

Our view of truth, therefore, meets at once
an ethical and a logical need. The real
world is precisely that world in which the loyal
are at home. Their loyalty is no pathetic
fallacy. Their causes are real facts in the
universe. The universe as a whole possesses
that unity which loyalty to loyalty seeks to
express in its service of the whole of life.

Herewith, however, it occurs to us to ask
one final question. Is not this real world,
whose true unity the loyal acknowledge by
their every deed, and whose conscious unity
every process of truth seeking presupposes,
is not this also the world which religion

376

LOYALTY AND RELIGION

recognizes? If so, what is the relation of
loyalty to religion ?

The materials for answering this question
are now in our hands. We have been so
deliberate in preparing them for our present
purpose, just for the sake of making our
answer the simpler when it comes.

We have now defined loyalty as the will to
manifest the eternal in and through the deeds
of individual selves. As for religion, in
its highest historical forms (which here alone
concern us), religion, as I think, may be de
fined as follows. Religion (in these its high
est forms) is the interpretation both of the
eternal and of the spirit of loyalty through
emotion, and through a fitting activity of the
imagination.

Religion, in any form, has always been an
effort to interpret and to make use of some
superhuman world. The history, the genesis,
the earlier and simpler forms of religion, the
relations of religion and morality in the

377

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

primitive life of mankind, do not here con
cern us. It is enough to say that, in history,
there has often been a serious tension be
tween the interests of religion and those of
morality. For the higher powers have very
generally seemed to man to be either non-
moral or immoral. This very tension, only
too frequently, still exists for many people
to-day. One of the greatest and hardest
discoveries of the human mind has been the
discovery of how to reconcile, not religion
and science, but religion and morality.
Whoever knows even a small portion of the
history of the cults of mankind is aware of the
difficulties to which I refer. The superhu
man has been conceived by men in terms that
were often far enough from those which loy
alty requires. Whoever will read over the
recorded words of a writer nowadays too
much neglected, the rugged and magnifi
cently loyal Old Testament prophet Amos,
can see for himself how bravely the difficulty
of conceiving the superhuman as the righteous,
was faced by one of the first who ever viewed

378

LOYALTY AND RELIGION

the relation of religion and morality as our
best teachers have since taught us to view
them. And yet such a reader can also see
how hard this very task of the prophet was.
When we remember also that so great a mind
as that of the originator of Buddhism, after all
the long previous toil of Hindoo thought upon
this great problem, could see no way to recon
cile religion and morality, except by bringing
them both to the shores of the mysterious and
soundless ocean of Nirvana, and sinking
them together in its depths (an undertaking
which Buddha regarded as the salvation of
the world), we get a further view of the nature
of the problem. When we remember that St.
Paul, after many years of lonely spiritual
struggle, attempted in his teaching to recon
cile morality and religion by an interpretation
of Christianity which has ever since kept the
Christian world in a most inspiring ferment of
theological controversy and of practical con
flict, we are again instructed as to the serious
ness of the issue. But as a fact, the experi
ence of the civilized man has gradually led him

379

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

to see how to reconcile the moral life and the
religious spirit. Since this reconciliation is one
which our theory of truth, and of the con
stitution of the real world, substantially jus
tifies, we are now ready for a brief review of
the entire situation.

People often say that mere morality is
something very remote from true religion.
Sometimes people say this in the interests of
religion, meaning to point out that mere
morality can at best make you only a more
or less tolerable citizen, while only religion
can reconcile you, as such people say, to that
superhuman world whose existence and whose
support alone make human life worth living.
But sometimes almost the same assertion is
made in the interest, of pure morality, viewed
as something independent of religion. Some
people tell you, namely, that since, as they
say, religion is a collection of doubtful beliefs,
of superstitions, and of more or less exalted
emotions, morality is all the better for keep
ing aloof from religion. Suffering man needs
your help ; your friends need as much happi-

380

LOYALTY AND RELIGION

ness as you can give them; conventional
morality is, on the whole, a good thing. Learn
righteousness, therefore, say they, and leave
religion to the fantastic-minded who love to
believe. The human is what we need. Let the
superhuman alone.

Now, our philosophy of loyalty, aiming at
something much larger and richer than the
mere sum of human happiness in individual
men, has taught us that there is no such
sharp dividing line between the human and
the superhuman as these attempts to sunder
the provinces of religion and morality would
imply. The loyal serve something more than
individual lives. Even Nietzsche, individu
alist and ethical naturalist though he was,
illustrates our present thesis. He began the
later period of his teaching by asserting that
"God is dead"; and (lest one might regard
this as a mere attack upon monotheism, and
might suppose Nietzsche to be an old-fash
ioned heathen polytheist) he added the fa
mous remark that, in case any gods whatever
existed, he could not possibly endure being

381

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

himself no god. " Therefore" so he rea
soned, "there are no gods." All this seems
to leave man very much to his own devices.
Yet Nietzsche at once set up the cult of the
ideal future being called the Uebermensch or
Superman. And the Uebermensch is just as
much of a god as anybody who ever throned
upon Olympus or dwelt in the sky. And if
the doctrine of the "Eternal Recurrence,"
as Nietzsche defined it, is true, the Uebermensch
belongs not only to the ideal future, but has
existed an endless number of times already.

If our philosophy of loyalty is right, Nietz
sche was not wrong in this appeal to the
superhuman. The superhuman we indeed
have always with us. Life has no sense
without it. But the superhuman need not
be the magical. It need not be the object of
superstition. And if we are desirous of uni
fying the interests of morality and religion, it
is well indeed to begin, as rugged old Amos
began, by first appreciating what righteous
ness is, and then by interpreting righteous
ness, in a perfectly reasonable and non-super-

382

LOYALTY AND RELIGION

stitious way, in superhuman terms. Then
we shall be ready to appreciate what religion,
whose roots are indeed by no means wholly in
our moral nature, nevertheless has to offer us
as a supplement to our morality.

VI

Loyalty is a service of causes. But, as we
saw, we do not, we cannot, wait until some
body clearly shows us how good the causes
are in themselves, before we set about serving
them. We first practically learn of the good
ness of our causes through the very act of
serving them. Loyalty begins, then, in all of
us, in elemental forms. A cause fascinates
us - - we at first know not clearly why. We
give ourselves willingly to that cause. Here
with our true life begins. The cause may
indeed be a bad one. But at worst it is our
way of interpreting the true cause. If we
let our loyalty develop, it tends to turn into
the service of the universal cause. Hence I
deliberately declined, in this discussion, to
base my theory of loyalty upon that meta-

383

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

physical doctrine which I postponed to my
latest lectures. It is a very imperfect view
of the real world which most youth get before
them before they begin to be loyal. Hosts
of the loyal actually manifest the eternal in
their deeds, and know not that they do so.
They only know that they are given over to
their cause. The first good of loyalty lies,
then, in the fact which we emphasized in our
earlier lectures. Reverberating all through
you, stirring you to your depths, loyalty first
unifies your plan of life, and thereby gives
you what nothing else can give, your self
as a life lived in accordance with a plan, your
conscience as your plan interpreted for you
through your ideal, your cause expressed as
your personal purpose in living.

In so far, then, one can indeed be loyal
without being consciously and explicitly reli
gious. One s cause, in its first intention,
appears to him human, concrete, practical.
It is also an ideal. It is also a superhuman
entity. It also really means the service of
the eternal. But this fact may be, to the hard-.

384

LOYALTY AND RELIGION

working, and especially to the unimaginative,
and, in a worldly sense, fairly successful man,
a latent fact. He then, to be sure, gradually
idealizes his cause as he goes ; but this ideal
izing in so far becomes no very explicitly
emphasized process in his life, although, as
we have seen, some tendency to deify the
cause is inevitable.

Meanwhile, such an imperfectly developed
but loyal man may also accept, upon tradi
tional grounds, a religion. This religion will
then tell him about a superhuman world.
But in so far the religion need not be, to his
mind, an essential factor in his practical loy
alty. He may be superstitious ; or he may
be a religious formalist; or he may accept
his creed and his church simply because of
their social respectability and usefulness; or,
finally, he may even have a rich and genuine
religious experience, which still may remain
rather a mysticism than a morality, or an
aesthetic comfort rather than a love of his
cause.

In such cases, loyalty and religion may long

2c 385

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

keep apart. But the fact remains that loy
alty, if sincere, involves at least a latent belief
in the superhuman reality of the cause, and
means at least an unconscious devotion to the
one and eternal cause. But such a belief is
also a latent union of morality and religion.
Such a service is an unconscious piety. The
time may come, then, when the morality will
consciously need this union with the religious
creed of the individual whose growth we are
portraying.

This union must begin to become an ex
plicit union whenever that process which, in
our sixth lecture, we called the idealizing of
the cause, reaches its higher levels. We saw
that those higher levels are reached in the
presence of what seems to be, to human
vision, a lost cause. If we believe in the lost
cause, we become directly aware that we are
indeed seeking a city out of sight. If such a
cause is real, it belongs to a superhuman
world. Now, every cause worthy, as we said,
of lifelong service, and capable of unifying
our life plans, shows sooner or later that it is

386

LOYALTY AND RELIGION

a cause which we cannot successfully express
in any set of human experiences of transient
joys and of crumbling successes. Human life
taken merely as it flows, viewed merely as it
passes by in time and is gone, is indeed a lost
river of experience that plunges down the
mountains of youth and sinks in the deserts
of age. Its significance comes solely through
its relations to the air and the ocean and the
great deeps of universal experience. For by
such poor figures I may, in passing, symbolize
that really rational relation of our personal
experience to universal conscious experience,
- that relation to which I have devoted these
last two lectures.

Everybody ought to serve the universal
cause in his own individual way. For this,
as we have seen, is what loyalty, when it comes
to know its own mind, really means. But
whoever thus serves inevitably loses his cause
in our poor world of human sense-experience,
because his cause is too good for this present
temporal world to express it. And that is,
after all, what the old theology meant when it

387

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

called you and me, as we now naturally are,
lost beings. Our deepest loyalty lies in devot
ing ourselves to causes that are just now lost
to our poor human nature. One can express
this, of course, by saying that the true cause
is indeed real enough, in the higher world,
while it is our poor human nature which is
lost. Both ways of viewing the case have
their truth. Loyalty means a transformation
of our nature.

Lost causes, then, we must serve. But as
we have seen, in our sixth lecture, loyalty to a
lost cause has two companions, grief and imag
ination. Now, these two are the parents of all
the higher forms of genuinely ethical religion.
If you doubt the fact, read the scriptures of
any of the great ethical faiths. Consult the
psalter, the hymns, the devotional books, or
the prayers of the church. Such religion
interprets the superhuman in forms that our
longing, our grief, and our imagination in
vent, but also in terms that are intended to
meet the demands of our highest loyalty.
For we are loyal to that unity of life which,

388

LOYALTY AND RELIGION

as our truer moral consciousness learns to
believe, owns the whole real world, and con
stitutes the cause of causes. In being loyal
to universal loyalty, we are serving the unity
of life.

This true unity of the world-life, however,
is at once very near to us and very far from
us. Very near it is; for we have our being
in it, and depend upon it for whatever worth
we have. Apart from it we are but the gur
gling stream soon to be lost in the desert. In
union with it we have individual significance
in and for the whole. But we are very far
from it also, because our human experience
throws such fragmentary light upon the de
tails of our relation to its activities. Hence in
order to feel our relations to it as vital relations,
we have to bring it near to our feelings and
to our imaginations. And we long and suffer
the loneliness of this life as we do so. But
because we know of the details of the world
only through our empirical sciences, while
these give us rather materials for a rational
life than a view of the unity of life, we are

389

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

indeed left to our imagination to assuage
grief and to help in the training of loyalty.
For here, that is, precisely as to the details of
the system of facts whereby our life is linked
to the eternal, our science forsakes us. We
can know that we are thus linked. How we
are linked, our sciences do not make manifest
to us.

Hence the actual content of the higher
ethical religions is endlessly rich in legend
and in other symbolic portrayal. This por
trayal is rich in emotional meaning and in
vivid detail. What this portrayal attempts
to characterize is, in its general outline, an
absolute truth. This truth consists in the
following facts : First, the rational unity and
goodness of the world-life; next, its true but
invisible nearness to us, despite our ignorance;
further, its fulness of meaning despite our
barrenness of present experience; and yet
more, its interest in our personal destiny as
moral beings; and finally, the certainty that,
through our actual human loyalty, we come,
like Moses, face to face with the true will of

390

LOYALTY AND RELIGION

the world, as a man speaks to his friend. In
recognizing these facts, we have before us
what may be called the creed of the Abso
lute Religion.

You may well ask, of course, whether our
theory of truth, as heretofore expounded, gives
any warrant to such religious convictions. I
hold that it does give warrant to them. The
symbols in which these truths are expressed by
one or another religion are indeed due to all
sorts of historical accidents, and to the most
varied play of the imaginations both of the
peoples and of the religious geniuses of our
race. But that our relations to the world-life
are relations wherein we are consciously met,
from the other side, by a superhuman and
yet strictly personal conscious life, in which
our own personalities are themselves bound
up, but which also .is not only richer but is
more concrete and definitely conscious and
real than we are, this seems to me to be an
inevitable corollary of my theory of truth.

391

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

VII

And now, finally, to sum up our whole doc
trine of loyalty and religion. Two things
belonging to the world-life we know - - two
at least, if my theory is true : it is defined in
terms of our own needs; and it includes and
completes our experience. Hence, in any case,
it is precisely as live and elemental and con
crete as we are; and there is not a need of
ours which is not its own. If you ask why I
call it good - - well, the very arguments which
recent pragmatism has used are, as you re
member, here my warrant. A truth cannot
be a merely theoretical truth. True is that
which successfully fulfils an idea. Whoever,
again, is not succeeding, or is facing an evil,
or is dissatisfied, is inevitably demanding and
defining facts that are far beyond him, and that
are not yet consciously his own. A knower
of the totality of truth is therefore, of neces
sity, in possession of the fulfilment of all
rational purposes. If, however, you ask why
this world-life permits any evil whatever, or

392

LOYALTY AND RELIGION

any finitude, or any imperfections, 1 must in
deed reply that here is no place for a general
discussion of the whole problem of evil, which
I have repeatedly and wearisomely considered
in other discussions of mine. But this obser
vation does belong here. Our theory of evil
is indeed no "shallow optimism," but is
founded upon the deepest, the bitterest, and
the dearest moral experience of the human
race. The loyal, and they alone, know the
one great good of suffering, of ignorance, of
finitude, of loss, of defeat and that is just
the good of loyalty, so long as the cause itself
can only be viewed as indeed a living whole.
Spiritual peace is surely no easy thing. We
win that peace only through stress and suffer
ing and loss and labor. But when we find
the preciousness of the idealized cause empha
sized through grief, we see that, whatever evil
is, it at least may have its place in an ideal
order. What would be the universe without
loyalty; and what would loyalty be without
trial ? And when we remember that, from
this point of view, our own griefs are the griefs

303

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

of the very world consciousness itself, in so
far as this world-life is expressed in our lives,
it may well occur to us that the life of loyalty
with all its griefs and burdens and cares may
be the very foundation of the attainment of
that spiritual triumph which we must conceive
as realized by the world spirit.

Perhaps, however, one weakly says : "If
the world will attains in its wholeness what we
seek, why need we seek that good at all?" I
answer at once that our whole philosophy of
loyalty instantly shows the vanity of such
speech. Of course, the world-life does not
obtain the individual good that is involved in
my willing loyalty unless indeed I am loyal.
The cause may in some way triumph without
me, but not as my cause. We have never
defined our theory as meaning that the world-
life Is first eternally complete, but then asks us,
in an indifferent way, to copy its perfections.
Our view is that each of us who is loyal is
doing his unique deed in that whole of life
which we have called the eternal simply
because it is the conspectus of the totality of

394

LOYALTY AND RELIGION

life, past, present, and future. If my deed
were not done, the world-life would miss my
deed. Each of us can say that. The very
basis of our theory of truth, which we found
upon the deeds, the ideas, the practical needs,
of each of us, gives every individual his unique
place in the world order his deed that no
body else can do, his will which is his own.
"Our wills are ours to make them thine."
The unity of the world is not an ocean in which
we are lost, but a life which is and which
needs all our lives in one. Our loyalty de
fines that unity for us as a living, active unity.
We have come to the unity through the under
standing of our loyalty. It is an eternal unity
only in so far as it includes all time and
change and life and deeds. And therefore,
when we reach this view, since the view simply
fulfils what loyalty demands, our loyalty re
mains as precious to us, and as practical,
and as genuinely a service of a cause, as it
was before. It is no sort of "moral holiday"
that this whole world-life suggests to us. It is
precisely as a whole life of ideal strivings in

395

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

which we have our places as individual selves
and are such selves only in so far as we strive
to do our part in the whole, it is thus, and
thus only, that our philosophy of loyalty
regards the universe.

Religion, therefore, precisely in so far as it
attempts to conceive the universe as a con
scious and personal life of superhuman mean
ing, and as a life that is in close touch with
our own meaning, is eternally true. But now
it is just this general view of the universe as a

*!

rational order that is indeed open to our
rational knowledge. No part of such a doc
trine gives us, however, the present right as
human beings to determine with any certainty
the details of the world-life, except in so far
as they come within the scope of our scien
tific and of our social inquiries. Hence,
when religion, in the service of loyalty, inter
prets the world-life to us with symbolic detail,
it gives us indeed merely symbols of the eternal
truth. That this truth is indeed eternal, that
our loyalty brings us into personal relations
with a personal world-life, which values our

396

LOYALTY AND RELIGION

every loyal deed, and needs that deed, all this
is true and rational. And just this is what
religion rightly illustrates. But the parables,
the symbols, the historical incidents that the
religious imagination uses in its portrayals,
these are the more or less sacred and transient
accidents in which the "real presence" of the
divine at once shows itself to us, and hides the
detail of its inner life from us. These acci
dents of the religious imagination endure
through many ages ; but they also vary from
place to place and from one nation or race of
men to another, and they ought to do so.
Whoever sees the living truth of the personal
and conscious and ethical unity of the world
through these symbols is possessed of the
absolute religion, whatever be his nominal
creed or church. Whoever overemphasizes
the empirical details of these symbols, and
then asks us to accept these details as literally
true, commits an error which seems to me
simply to invert that error whereof, at the last
time, I ventured to accuse my pragmatist
friends. Such a literalist, who reads his

397

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY

symbols as revelations of the detailed structure
of the divine life, seems to me, namely, to look
for the eternal within the realm of the mere
data of human sense and imagination. To
do this, I think, is indeed to seek the risen
Lord in the open sepulchre.

Concerning the living truth of the whole
conscious universe, one can well say, as one
observes the special facts of human sense and
imagination: "He is not here; he is arisen."
Yet equally from the whole circle of the heaven
of that entire self-conscious life which is the
truth, there comes always, and to all the loyal,
the word: "Lo, I am with you alway, even
unto the end of the world."

398

INDEX

ABSTRACTIONS : impersonal ab
stractions cannot be proper
objects of loyalty, 20, 52.

AGREEMENT: with reality, in
relation to truth, 316, 322, 324,
327, 328, 340-346, 360-373.

ALTRUISM : a mere fragment of
goodness, 218; relations of,
to benevolence, to justice, and
to loyalty, see BENEVOLENCE
and JUSTICE.

AMERICAN PROBLEMS : problem
of family loyalty, 220-228;
loyalty to the national govern
ment, 233-236; the problem
of the "self-estranged social
mind," 238-244; provincial
ism as a means of training
loyalty, 245-248 ; defective
loyalty in our national life,
217-220 ; defective patriotism,
233-236; holidays, 267, 268;
sport, 265-267.

ANCESTRAL TENDENCIES : as basis
of our conflicting natural de
sires, 27, 28, 31, 57.

ARISTOTLE : 26.

ARNOLD VON WINKELRIED : 113,
329.

ART AND LOYALTY : 289, 290.

AUGUSTINE, SAINT : 26.

AUTHORITY: of the moral law,
dependent for its justification
upon our own rational will, 25 ;
individualistic revolt against
authority, 3-6, 33-35, 37, 60,
65-67, 83, 84, 92-95 ; decline of
family authority, 220-223 ; loy
alty not blind submission to
authority, 42, 58, 71-79, 94, 95,
110, 199, 226; authority of

conscience defined and ex
plained, 172-179.
AUTONOMY : of the rational will,
principle of, as fundamental
in ethics, 24-27 ; paradox re
garding this autonomy, 30, 31,
34-37 ; loyalty as the solution
of the paradox, 38-42; au
tonomy as defined by some
forms of individualism, 84, 85,
92; loyalty as the means of
securing moral autonomy, 95,
110. See also SELF, SELF-
WILL, and LOYALTY.

BENEVOLENCE : its relation to
loyalty, and to justice, 15, 144;
definition of benevolence, 145;
apart from loyalty is senti-
mentalism, but necessarily at
tends loyalty, 160.

BUDDHISM : influence of, upon
the Japanese ideal of loyalty,
73 ; relation of Buddhism to
the historical conflicts between
religious and moral interests,
379.

BUSHIDO : the Japanese concept
of loyalty sketched, 70-76;
it is not without individualistic
features, 72, 73, 74, 76; is a
counter-instance to urge against
the partisans of false individual
ism, 71, 75; its training of
serenity and self-control, 76;
its relation to patriotism, 235.

CASH VALUE : as a metaphorical
expression for the nature of
truth, 321-323, 328, 329, 346,
347.

INDEX

CAUSE : the concept of a cause to
which one can be loyal, 17, 18-
20; a cause must involve
persons, but be also, in some
sense, super-individual, 20, 51
53, 307-313 ; and hence, if real,
must involve a superhuman
spiritual unity of life, 309, 313,
329, 330, 341 . 342, 347, 348,
354, 355; the true cause
characterized as "the eternal,"
357 ; and related to the object
of the religious consciousness,
377 ; all serving of imperfect
causes as fragmentary forms of
the service of the true cause,
375; the true cause a reality,
303-306, 313, 314, 340-346,
358-373 ; hence, also an object
for religion, 382-391. The
cause for any individual has
to be denned in terms of his
personal choice and of his
individual nature, 19, 39-42,
52-54, 58, 93, 110, 125, 130,
131, 138, 156, 157, 177, 186,
187, 226; and the individual
may be loyal to an evil cause,
18, 108, 109, 114-118; but the
principle of loyalty to loyalty
relates cause of each individual
to the true and universal cause,
117-128; resulting organiza
tion of the individual s service
of causes, 130-146, 151-162;
cause and conscience as aspects
of one fact, 44, 47, 173-177.
The idealizing of individual
causes as a means of training
in loyalty, 269 ; this idealizing
as guided by personal leaders,
270-276; as exemplified by
the history of lost causes, 277-
286; the lost cause as a link
which binds individual to
universal causes, 291-296, 297 ;
the truth as a cause, and as at
present, in part, a lost cause,
340; but real and universal,
340, 341 ; the true cause as
defined by the creed of the

Absolute Religion, 390. See
also LOYALTY, especially LOY
ALTY TO LOYALTY.

CHARLES I : incident of the
King s invasion of the House
of Commons, 103-107.

CHILDHOOD : preparation for loy
alty, and rudiments of loyalty
in childhood, 259-262; ideal
comrades, 2GO ; gangs of boys,
262 ; talebearing and the child
ish code of honor, 262, 263.

CHINESE SAGES : influence of,
upon the Japanese ideal of
loyalty, 73.

CHRISTIANITY : due to loyalty
to a lost cause, 279, 280, 283,
293.

CIVIL WAR, AMERICAN : loyalty to
loyalty displayed upon both
sides ; resulting service of the
one cause of the nation, 193.

COMMERCIAL HONESTY : as an
instance of the principle of
loyalty to loyalty, 141.

CONFLICT : the mutual warfare
of causes as a supreme evil,
114-117; loyalty to loyalty
as averse to such conflicts, 119,
126, 144; where conflict is
inevitable, the principle of
loyalty to loyalty neverthe
less applies, and determines
the ethics of conflict, 158, 162,
214. The decision of Con
science as between conflicting
forms of personal loyalty, 179-
196. See CONSCIENCE and
DECISIVENESS.

CONFORMITY, SOCIAL : 34, 35, 38,
41, 58 ; is never a satisfactory
expression of the individual
will, unless it becomes part of
loyalty, 60, 62, 63, 66, 82-84,
91, 98, 124-126, 199. See also
SELF-WILL, SELF, and LOYALTY.

CONSCIENCE : " Dictates of," 162,
164, 180 ; loyalty as apparently
opposed to conscience, 63 ;
the problem of conscience
stated, 166; the solution of

400

INDEX

this problem depends upon that
of the problem of the Self, 167 ;
the Self as defined by a plan
of life, 168, 169; loyalty as a
means of defining a plan of
life, 170-172; "my cause is
my conscience," 44, 47, 173;
cause, ideal, and conscience in
their relations, 174-177 ; con
science not the root but the
flower of moral life, 177;
fallibility of conscience, 177,
178 ; conscience as an indi
vidual possession, 179; doubt
ful cases of conscience, 180-
196; decisiveness and fidelity
as requirements of conscience,
185 sqq. ; conscience as the
"response of the entire na
ture," 195, 196.

CONVENTIONAL MORALITY : is
criticised in modern discussion,
3-6; needs revision, 9, 10;
consists of a maze of precepts of
various origin, 149, 150; yet
expresses significant truth, 150;
has an "immortal soul," 11,
12; needs to be unified, 149-
151 ; can be revised and ra
tionally unified in terms of the
principle of loyalty to loyalty,
139-146, 159-162.

COURTESY : as a special instance
of the principle of loyalty to
loyalty, 155.

CREED : of the Absolute Religion,
390.

DAVID : the throne of, 279.

DEATH : in relation to loyalty,
90, 91, 235, 293-295, 353, 398.

DECISIVENESS : as one aspect of
loyalty, as a requirement of
conscience, and as leading to
and accompanying fidelity,
179-196 ; the conflicting claims
of various loyalties when they
appeal to the same person, 181 ;
illustrations, 182-184 ; the duty
to decide, 185-190; decision
must be followed up by faith

fulness, 190; conscience afi
the deciding principle, 192;
mystery, fallibility, and duti-
fulness of the conscientious
decision, 193-196.

DESIRES: natural, not to be de
fined simply in terms of pleas
ure and pain, 28-30 ; are count
less and conflicting, id., 31, 57,
81, 123, 124; are not to be
unified through mere social
authority, 32-35, 82-84; nor
gratified by the attainment of
individual power, 84-89 ; but
reach reasonable unity only
through loyalty, 38-45, 57-59,
124, 125.

DEVOTION: not an adequate
synonym for Loyalty, 253.

DIVORCE: 221.

DUTY: problem of, stated, 24;
my duty as my own will
brought to clear self-conscious
ness, 25; thesis that duty can
be defined in terms of loyalty,
15; loyalty to loyalty as a
duty, 121 ; special duties as
forms of loyalty to loyalty,
129, 132, 133, 141 ; sketch of a
classification of duties, 142-
146, 159-161; fidelity and
decisiveness as duties, 185-196 ;
duties and rights, in their
relations to one another, 65
68, 91, 143, 150, 162.

ECKHART, MEISTER : 97, 125.

EMMAUS : the legend of the dis
ciples on the road to, 293.

ETERNAL, THE: 344, 348, 356;
loyalty as the will to manifest
the eternal in the deeds of a
Self, 357 ; religion as the in
terpretation of the eternal, 377 ;
truth concerning the eternal
summarized, 389-398.

ETHICS : modern tendency
towards revision of ethical
doctrine, 3-6; practical con
sequences of this tendency, 8;
consequent need of a revision

2D

401

INDEX

of ethical standards, 9-12;
limitations of the study of
ethics proposed in the present
work, 7 ; a revision of ethical
doctrine no mere break with
the past, 11, 12; problem of
ethics stated, 24-31; this
problem insoluble in terms of
mere convention, 33-37 ; loy
alty as a personal solution of
the problem for any given
individual, 38-47; the ethics
of individualism discussed, 59
98; loyalty to loyalty as a
general solution of the problem
of ethics, 111-128; applica
tion of this solution to the
special virtues, 128-146. See
also CONSCIENCE, DUTY, LOY
ALTY, MORALITY.

EVIL : problem of, 394.

EXPEDIENCY AND TRUTH : 322,
331-340.

FAIR PLAY : in sport as a form of
loyalty to loyalty, 158, 163,
267.

FAMILY, THE : in modern Ameri
can life, 220-228; decline of
family authority, 220, 221;
the family ties are opportunities
for loyalty, or else forms of
loyalty, 221 ; their value, 221-
223 ; the preciousness of family
loyalty, 223-228.

FIDELITY : to the personal cause
once chosen, is an inseparable
aspect of the principle of
loyalty to loyalty, 157, 190-
192, 207, 221, 222, 226; but is
also limited in its range of
application by that principle,
208 ; and hereby the conditions
which may require the break
ing of ties are defined, 157, 208,
224.

FICHTE, J. G. : 325, 326.

FORTUNE : contrast between for
tune as viewed by the power-
seekers and as viewed by the
loyal, 87-92.

FOURTH OF JULY : 267.
FRIENDSHIP : 287.

GENEROSITY : 150, 161.

GEORGE, HENRY : 4.

GOOD, THE : is determined for
each individual by his own will
and desire, 25 ; but is yet not
definable in terms of pleasure
and pain, 28 ; nor yet in terms
of happiness, 81 ; nor in terms
of social conformity, 82-84 ;
nor in terms of Power, 84-92 ;
nor in terms of autonomy
apart from loyalty, 93; nor in
terms of serenity apart from
activity, 95-97. Loyalty as a
supreme good for the indi
vidual, 21-24, 39-47, 57-59,
75-77, 98, 112-114, 124, 125-
152 ; loyalty to loyalty as an
universal good, 118, 126, 127,
153-158; the good and the
expedient in relation to the
concept of truth, 322, 323, 328-
331, 337-340; the good in its
relation to the problem of evil,
392 ; the goodness of the world
no reason for a "moral holi
day," 395.

GRAY S ELEGY : cited, 123.

GRIEF AND IMAGINATION : as the
accompaniments of loyalty to
lost causes, 283; consequences
of this union, 281-285; rela
tion between religion and mo
rality thus brought to pass,
285, 286; the higher ethical
religions as the products of
grief and imagination, 388.

HEGEL: on the "self-estranged
social mind," 238-241 ; on the
natvire of truth, 325.

HESITANCY : corrected by loyalty,
22 ; opposed by the decisiveness
which loyalty requires, 185
196. False individualism as a
form of hesitancy, 98.

HOLIDAYS : 267.

HORA NOVISSIMA : 283.

402

INDEX

IBSEN : 4, 98.

IDEALIZING OF THE CAUSE : proc
ess described and illustrated,
268 sqq. ; relation to lost causes,
276-286, 291-298; to art and
religion, 288-291 ; to religious
truth, 386-398 ; to the general
theory of truth and reality,
LECTURES VII AND VIII.
IMAGINATION : in its influence
upon the idealizing of lost
causes, and upon the origin of
higher religion, see GRIEF arid
IMAGINATION.

INDEPENDENCE : as an ideal of
individual life, 92-95. See AU
TONOMY, AUTHORITY, INDI
VIDUALISM, and LOYALTY.
INDIVIDUALISM : as an assailant
of conventional morality in
recent times, 4 ; the ethics of
individualism discussed, 59-98;
four forms of individualism
illustrated, 60-70 ; comparison
of the Japanese type of loyalty
with the claims of individualism,
70-76; basis and relative
justification of individualism,
77-80 ; criticism of special
individualistic ideals, 81-98 ;
individual happiness as an
ideal, 81, cf. 28-30; revolt of
individualism against mere
conventionality justified, 84 ;
power as an individualistic
ideal, 84-91 ; moral autonomy,
92-94, cf. 24-26; individual
serenity, 95-97 ; individualism
fulfilled only in loyalty, 98;
loyalty as determined by in
dividual choice, 110, 130, 133,
185-196; the reconciliation of
loyalty and individualism, 199,
200, 223-228; the individual
without loyalty as a "spoke out
of a wheel," 222; as morally
dead, 225; the moral self as
defined through its cause, 171,
172.

INSTINCTS : their variety and
their relation to desires, to

pleasure, and to pain, 28-30.
See also DESIRES, and PLEAS
URE AND PAIN.

ISRAEL : religion of, due to loyalty
to a lost cause, 278, 279 ; con
sequences for Christianity and
for the world, 279, 280, 293.

JAMES, PROFESSOR WILLIAM : On
"The Will to Believe," 189,
357 ; his doctrine regarding
the nature of truth expounded,
315-323; criticised, 324-340;
the author s obligations to him
as teacher and friend, 325-327.

JAPANESE LOYALTY : see BUSHIDO,
72-77.

JAPANESE PATRIOTISM : id., see
also 235.

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY : 325.

JUSTICE : definition of, 144 ; is
one aspect of loyalty, id., see
also 15 ; its relation to benevo
lence and kindness, 145, 162.

KANT : 26, 64, 79, 325.

LABOR-UNIONS : 229-232, 244.

LEE, ROBERT E. : 183, 193.

LEGEND : in religion, 390.

LIBERTY : without loyalty is
worthless to any people, 211.

LINCOLN, ABRAHAM : 212.

LOST CAUSES : their significance
for the history and for the
individual training of loyalty,
277-286, 291-295; for the
unifying of the moral and the
religious consciousness, 297,
298, 386-389.

LOVE OF MANKIND : in relation
to the principle of loyalty to
loyalty, 150, 159-162, 214.

LOYALTY : plan of a Philosophy of
Loyalty outlined, 12-16; pre
liminary definition of loyalty,
16, 17, cf. also 252-254; final
definition of loyalty, 357;
relation of loyalty to the con
cept of a cause to which one is
loyal, 18, 19; loyalty never a

403

INDEX

service of the wholly impersonal,
20; social interests necessary
to loyalty, 252, 254-257; the
cause as a tie that binds in
dividuals into an unity, 20,
cf. 307-312, 329, 347, 348,
355-357; the good of loyalty,
complexity of the question, 21 ;
value of loyalty for the loyal
man, 22 ; relation of this value
to the problem of the plan of
life, 24-37 ; how loyalty may
appear as a personal solution
of this problem, 38 sqq. ; loy
alty as an intensification of
self-consciousness, 41 ; yet as
a subordination of self-will, 42 ;
patriotism and the war-spirit
as simple illustrations of loy
alty, 39-41; but not as the
principal illustrations, 43 ;
fruits of loyalty, 44-46; loy
alty as essential to peace in
active living, 46 ; doubts as to
whether the worthy cause can
be found, 47, 48 ; summary of
the value of loyalty for the
individual, 51-59 ; individual
istic objections to the value of
loyalty for the loyal individual,
5970 ; loyalty as opposed to
personal independence, 60, 61 ;
as opposed to the development
of conscience, 62, 63 ; loyalty
as opposed to self-assertion,
65-68 ; as opposed to spiritual
ity, 69 ; Japanese loyalty as a
counter-instance with which
to answer all these objections to
loyalty, 70-76; the failure of
individualism to satisfy the
individual unless it assumes
the form of loyalty, 77-97 ;
loyalty in relation to fortune,
and to the failure of our search
for individual power, 89-91 ;
the loyal as "always at home,"
despite ill fortune, 91 ; loyalty
and independence of moral
judgment, 92-95; loyalty as
the fulfilment of spirituality,

97 ; synthesis of loyalty and
individualism, 98; loyalty as
illustrated by the Speaker in
presence of King Charles, 101-
105 ; personal dignity of loyalty,
105-107. LOYALTY TO LOY
ALTY as a solution of the problem
of the search for a worthy cause,
107-146; difficulty of the
definition of a cause worthy of
loyalty, 107-111 ; loyalty as a
common human good, 112-114 ;
the conflict of causes, and of
loyalties, as an evil, 114, 115;
and as a supreme evil, 116, 117 ;
a cause is good in so far as it
furthers universal loyalty, 118;
the principle of loyalty to
loyalty stated, 121 ; defended,
122128 ; is not an unpractical
principle, 128-139; the com
monplace virtues as instances
of loyalty to loyalty, 129;
the system of causes required
in order to be loyal to loyalty,
132 ; each man s cause to be
individually chosen, 131, 133 ;
indirect influence of one man s
loyalty upon the general loy
alty, 134-138; a personal il
lustration of this principle,
135-137 ; loyalty is contagious,
137 ; the rational duties of the
civilized man as instances of
loyalty to loyalty, 139 ; truth-
speaking as a form of loyalty,
140 ; commercial honesty, as
another form, 141 ; duties to
self, in the light of the principle
of loyalty, 142; rights, 143;
duties to neighbors, 144; be
nevolence and justice as morally
valuable only when determined
by loyalty, 144-146 ; summary
of the theory of loyalty to
loyalty, 149-162 ; courtesy and
loyalty, 155 ; universal respect
for the loyalty of all men a
duty, 157, 158 ; solution of
popular moral perplexities
through the principle of loyalty

404

INDEX

to loyalty, 160-162. The re
lations of loyalty to CON
SCIENCE, 162-196 (see CON
SCIENCE) . Further illustra
tions and summaries regarding
loyalty, 200-211; loyalty va
ries with the individual, 200
loyalty to loyalty as a principle
that requires us to be strict
towards ourselves, liberal in
our judgments towards others,
203-207; fidelity and loyal ty
inseparable, 190, 191, 207, 221
loyalty to loyalty existed in
both the North and the South
during the civil war, 193 ; con
sequences hereof, id.; problem
of teaching loyalty a difficult
one, 211 ; how to be dealt
with, 215-217, 232, 245-248,
258-298. LOYALTY IN RELA
TION TO AMERICAN PROBLEMS
211-248; present status of
loyalty in our national life,
213, 217-219, 223, 228-232,
241-244 ; the problem of fam
ily loyalty, 220-228; loyalty
to the national government,
233-236 ; provincialism as a
means of training loyalty, 245-
248. TRAINING FOR LOY
ALTY, involves personal leaders
and the idealizing of causes,
269-276, and also labors which
exercise loyalty, 296-298; loy
alty rudimentary in childhood,
258-263 ; relations of childhood
imagination to loyalty, 260;
respect for the beginnings of
childish loyalty important, 252 ;
loyalty in youth, 263-268;
fraternities and sports, 265,
266; fair play in sport, 267;
public holidays, 267, 268;
illustrations of adult training
in loyalty, 270-275 ; lost causes
and their importance for loy
alty, 277-286, 291-296 ; art in
its relation to loyalty, 289,
290. METAPHYSICAL ASPECTS
OF LOYALTY, 301-310, 355-

360; loyalty involves a belief
that the cause is real, 301, 304,
306, 307 ; spiritual unity of life
implied by this belief, 309;
consequent opposition between
the philosophy of loyalty and
recent pragmatism, 313-316 ;
exposition and criticism of
pragmatism, 316-340 ; the view
of the nature of truth which
loyalty demands, 328-340, 358-
365; relations of loyalty to
RELIGION, 377-398.

MARX, KARL : 4.

MEMORIAL DAY : 267.

MESSIANIC IDEA : 279.

MORALITY : modern critics of
moral traditions, 3, 4; these
critics are often themselves
moral leaders, 4; need of a
criticism and revision of con
ventional morality, 9-11 ; moral
standards possess a meaning
that remains permanent de
spite revisions, 11,12; loyalty
as the fulfilment of the moral
law, 15 ; moral standards as
the expression of the individual
will rationalized and brought
to self-consciousness, 24-27 ;
individualism in morality, ex
pounded, illustrated, and criti
cised, 59-98; the moral code
of loyalty to loyal tv, 119-134,
142-144, 156-162," 200-211;
moral problems in American
life, 211-248; morality and
religion, their conflict and their
reconciliation, 377-398. See
also CONSCIENCE, DUTY,
ETHICS, LOYALTY.

NAPOLEON: 88, 91.

MATURE : human nature, apart
from social training, determines
no definite tendency of the
will, 31 ; but furnishes to us
a collection of unorganized
desires, 27-30; yet is predis
posed to the acquisition of

405

INDEX

social training, 32; is in need
of unified plans of life, 57-59,
123-125; and possesses an
innate power to acquire a con
science, 177.

NIETZSCHE: 4, 85, 98, 381, 382.

NITOBE : 72.

OBEDIENCE : in relation to loy
alty, 40, 41, 72-77, 82-84,
98, 102-106, 109, 124, 125,
220, 221.

OLD TESTAMENT : 279.

OMAR KHAYYAM : quoted, 58.

PAIN : see PLEASURE AND PAIN.

PATRIOTISM : 39-41 ; Japanese,
72-77, 235; lack of true pa
triotism in modern American
life, 228-237.

PHILOSOPHY : 13.

PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY : use
and definition of the phrase,
12-14; outline of the plan of
such a philosophy, 14-16;
general summary of the philos
ophy of loyalty, 351-358; a
philosophy of loyalty must in
clude a theory about the real
universe, 301-307. See also
LOYALTY, CONSCIENCE, INDI
VIDUALISM, MORALITY.

PLANS OF LIFE : their social ori
gin, and their relation to
loyalty, 34, 38, 42, 57; to the
definition of the Self, 167-172 ;
to conscience, 172-179; the
duty of decisiveness regarding
the plans of life, 185-196.

PLATO: 26.

PLEASURE AND PAIN : in what
way objects of desire, 28, 29;
the art of pleasure seeking one
of the hardest of arts, 30; the
good not definable in terms of
happiness, 81, 82; the pain of
defeat as an aid in the idealiz
ing of lost causes, 281-284,
295; the pain of labor for the
cause as an aid to loyalty, 296,
297 : suffering as an indis

pensable aspect of the spiritual
life, 393.

PLOTINUS : 69.

POLITICAL PARTIES IN AMERICA :
229-232.

PORTIA : 127.

POWER: doctrine that the high
est good for the individual is
power, stated, 84; illustrated
by the thesis of Nietzsche, 85,
86 ; the doctrine criticised, 86-
89; contrast between the
search for power and the loyal
service of a cause, 8991 ;
summary of the case against
power as an ideal, 91, 92;
national prowess valuable as
an instrument for serving
universal loyalty, 214.

PRAGMATISM : as a doctrine con
cerning the nature of truth,
315 sqq.; Professor William
James s form of pragmatism
expounded, 316-323 ; criticised,
324-340; in what sense the
author s theory of truth ig a
form of pragmatism, 324-326;
in what sense opposed to the
doctrine of James, 327-331;
the pragmatist on the witness-
stand, 331 ; in what sense
truth transcends all verifica
tions in terms of individual
human experiences, 339, 340;
bankruptcy of recent prag
matism, 346, 347. See TRUTH.

PROVINCIALISM : as an antidote
to the evils of the "self-
estranged social mind" in
America, and as a means for
the teaching of loyalty, 245-
248.

REALITY : the theory of truth and
of reality which is needed to
complete the philosophy of
loyalty, 301-313; truth seek
ing and loyalty, 313-315;
relation of this doctrine of
truth and reality to pragma
tism, 315-340 ; warrant for the

406

INDEX

doctrine of reality here in ques
tion, 340-348, 358-373; reli
gious interpretation of reality,
377; in what sense a true
interpretation, 390, 392; re
lation of the true and the
mythical elements in this in
terpretation, 392-398.
RELIGION : 3, 5, 179 ; definition
of, 377 ; relations to morality
often those of conflict, 378;
the efforts to reconcile religion
and morality, 379; grief and
imagination as the parents of
higher ethical religion, 388;
contrast and harmony of loy-
ajty and religion, 382-389;
the creed of the Absolute Reli
gion, 390 ; its justification, 391-
396 ; mythical accompaniments
and embodiments of religion,
282-284, 292, 390, 397; their
true significance, 398. Pa
triotism part of a religion with
the Japanese, 235 ; not so at
present in our own country,
236, 237.

RESPONSIBILITY : the conscious
ness of individual responsibility
hindered (according to an
opponent of loyalty), by the
cultivation of loyalty, 62, 63;
the objection answered, 64, 65,
71-76, 92-95.

RESTLESSNESS : modern, in regard
to traditions, and, in particular,
in regard to ethical traditions,
2-6; consequent need of a
revision of ethical standards,
912; such a revision no mere
break with the past, 11, 12;
loyalty as an antidote for moral
restlessness, 22, 44, 45, 73, 76
95-97.

RIGHT AND WRONG : the problem
of their distinction is soluble
only in terms of our own will,
24. See DUTY, CONSCIENCE,
ETHICS, LOYALTY.
RIGHTS : their relation to duties
from the point of view of some

forms of modern individual
ism, 66-68 ; such individual
ism opposed by the spirit of
loyalty, 75; yet loyalty in
volves some assertion of indi
vidual rights, 42; rights de
fined in terms of loyalty, 143,
161, 162.

RUSSIAN : protest of a young
Russian against loyalty, cited
and summarized, 60, 61, 67,
68, 95, 211; answered, 92-95.

SAMURAI, JAPANESE : the ethical
code of the Samurai charac
terized, 72-77; cf. 98, 113.

SELF : duty determined by the
rational will of the Self, 24-27 ;
difficulty in discovering what
this will is, 27-38; loyalty as
a practical solution of this
difficulty, 38-44, 57-59, 71-77 ;
social nature of the self, and
paradox of the conflict between
self-will and social convention,
32-37; individualism without
loyalty no solution of the prob
lem, 81-98, 210, 211, 224-227;
loyalty as a synthesis of self-
assertion and self-surrender,
41-44, 75, 98, 199, 211; the
self as the centre of its own
moral world, illusion and truth
in this view of moral values,
77-80, 124 ; duties to self, 142,
143, 150, 161, 162; the unified
self as defined by its plan of
life, 167-172; relation of the
self to its loyalty, 171 ; conse
quent doctrine of the con
science, 172-179.

SELF-CONTROL : as related to
Japanese loyalty, 76; as re
lated to loyalty in general, 97,
150, 161 ; cf. 287, 291-298.

SELF-WILL : in its relation to
social conventions and to natu
ral desires and instincts, 31
38; in its relation to loyalty,
38-44, 90, 93-95. See SELF
and WILL.

407

INDEX

SERENITY : as an ethical ideal,
68, 69, 95-97. See SPIRITUAL
ITY.

SOCIALISM : 4.

SOCIAL MIND : the " self-estranged
social mind" of Hegel s Phe
nomenology, 238241 ; relation
of this conception to modern
American conditions, 241244 ;
provincialism as an antidote,
245-248.

SOCIAL WILL : as the result of
social training, 38.

SOCIETY : as the teacher of con
ventional morality, 24, 32, 33-
35 ; is no final moral authority,
25, 82-84; and nevertheless,
a cause, for a loyal man, must
be social, 20, 254-257 ; Ameri
can social conditions discussed,
219-248. See LOYALTY IN RE
LATION TO AMERICAN PROB
LEMS.

SOCRATES: 26.

SPEAKER : of the House of Com
mons : incident of the Speak
er s answer to King Charles I,
103-107, 120.

SPINOZA: 88.

SPIRITUALITY : as opposed to loy
alty by one form of ethical
individualism, 68-70 ; as, never
theless, illustrated by Japanese
loyalty, 73 ; as properly to be
obtained only through loyalty,
95-97.

SPORT : see FAIR PLAY.

STEINMETZ, DR. RUDOLF : his
"Philosophy of War," 12,
13.

SUCCESS : as defined in terms of
loyalty, 89-91, 327-331, 341-
343, 348.

SYMPATHY : training in sympathy
is not necessarily training in
loyalty ; results as they appear
in our American life, 217
220.

TAYLOR, BAYARD: 97.
THANKSGIVING DAY : 267.

THOMAS, SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS :
70.

TOLSTOI : 4.

TRADITION : modern assaults upon,
3-6 ; ethical traditions also
affected by this tendency, 3, 4 ;
especial importance of the
assault upon tradition in the
case of ethics, 5, 6 ; revision
of tradition needed, 9, 10;
such revision not a mere break
with the past, 11, 12; relations
of loyalty to tradition, 53, 102,
133.

TRAINING FOR LOYALTY : see
zinder LOYALTY.

TRANSMUTATION : of moral values,
Nietzsche s movement towards
the, 4, 5.

TRUTH : the theory of truth and
reality which is demanded by
the philosophy of loyalty, 301
315; this theory opposed by
recent pragmatism, 315 ; ex
position of Professor William
James s pragmatism, 316323;
criticism of this theory, 324
340; the author s theory of
truth, 340-348, 358-364; its
relation to the theory of reality,
365-373; its relation to the
doctrine of loyalty further dis
cussed, 373-376 ; our theory of
truth meets at once an ethical
and a logical need, 376 ; con
sequences for the doctrine re
garding the relations ot loyalty
to religion, 377-398.

TRUTH-SPEAKING : as an instance
of the principle of loyalty to
loyalty, 140, 144, 154.

UNION : of various individuals in
one life as a necessary condition
for the definition of a fitting
cause to which one can be
loyal, 20, 52 (cf. 61), 58, 126,
268-276, 326; view regarding
the real world which must be
true if individuals are thus in
union through their causes,
307-310, 312, 313; defence of

408

INDEX

this view against pragmatism,
315-340; the positive warrant
for viewing the union of indi
viduals as real, 340-348, 358-
376.

UNITY : of individual life, as a
result of loyalty, 22, 58, 124,
133, 169-172; as related to
conscience, 172-179. The
unity of various individuals in
one super-individual life as de
manded by the conception of
a cause, 20, 307-313. See
CAUSE, LOYALTY, RELIGION,
and UNION.

UNIVERSE : 307. See REALITY
and TRUTH.

VALUES, MORAL: they must be
estimated in terms of the indi
vidual point of view, 25, 77-80 ;
yet the individual can define
values truly only in terms of
loyalty, 81-98; the true value
of loyalty definable only
through a theory of truth and
reality, 301-312; the value of
the world life, 392-398. Sec
GOOD and LOYALTY.

VIRTUES : the commonplace as
well as the fundamental virtues
as special forms of loyalty to
loyalty, 130. See also under
LOYALTY.

WAR-SPIRIT : as an illustration
of loyalty, 39-41, 53; in rela
tion to Japanese Bushido, 72;
is not usually just in its esti
mate of the enemy s loyalty,
109 ; is no more characteristic
than many other forms of
loyalty, 54, 102, 113; involves
the evil of assailing the loyalty
of the enemy, 115; how the
war-spirit is to be judged in
the light of the general prin
ciple of loyalty to loyalty, 214,
215.

WHITMAN, WALT : 98.
WILL : my duty as my own will
brought to clear self-conscious
ness, 25; difficulty of defining
what my own will is, 27-37;
loyalty as a solution of the
problem, 38-47. The indi
vidual will, interest, and desire,
determine the choice of the
right cause, subject to the prin
ciple of loyalty to loyalty, 19,
39-42, 52-54, 58, 93, 110, 125,
130, 131, 138, 156, 157, 177,
186, 187, 226, cf. 117-128.-
The "will of the world" in
relation to our loyalty, 390-
391 ; the individual will and
the universal will, 395.

ZION: 279.

409

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